Citizen Erased
by mmerainbows
Summary: Kurt's life isn't what he expected it would be when was young Glee club boy at McKinley. It's dangerous, it's dark, and it's the last place he'd expect a sweet reminder of the boy he used to be to show up.
1. Chapter 1

Kurt watched the dice roll at the table beside him and listened to the subsequent holler of the group gathered there as a pair of twos came up and the quiet man on the end smiled and pulled his chips towards him. Watching the game was certainly more interesting than the conversation he was only periodically acknowledging at the table he was at. The occasional nod and random hum of agreement was all it took to keep the mouths of his companions going. He hated the meat market. He had long gotten used to the gambling, the betting, the crudeness, and the drug use that went along with his line of work, if it could even be called work, but he still hesitated for a moment every time his meetings took him to this place.

"Damn, Jeremy! Get a load of the tits on that one!" one of his tablemates hooted as a new product took the stage. Kurt let his gaze flash over the scene, sighing softly before again diverting his eyes.

Thankfully his compatriots knew he was gay, so they didn't expect him to pay attention to the woman that crossed the front area. Occasionally, a guy would be led through, and then their attention would turn to Kurt, who, ever politely, rejected the human that had been paraded up front in the nude, usually drugged to the point of stumbling, and saying that that particular product wasn't his type.

"Hey man. All it needs is a hole - am I right?" one of them had suggested, earning a chorus of laughs from the group, and Kurt, in the interest of making sure his clients were happy, chuckled along with them and then breathed in relief when a woman was back on stage after bids had been taken and placed on whatever man had found himself in the unfortunate situation of being sold.

A waitress came by to refill their drinks, topless and therefore earning extra attention in the form of drunken suggestions and groping from the man on Kurt's left. He had to grit his teeth, as he always did, when the woman looked his way with eyes that barely managed to hold back the truth of the indignity she suffered. It could be worse though. The woman that worked here made good money, if only in tips, and it wasn't like they had been forced into the position like the people on stage.

"I tell you what, man… if the old lady wasn't already wise on me, I'd be bidding on that slice up front."

"Fuck that, man. You owe Kurt here way too much to be bidding on shit."

"Fuck that. Kurt would spot me. Wouldn't you, man?"

With the mention of his name, Kurt had tuned back into the conversation. He smirked, putting back on his bankers face as he lit a cigar and made the men wait for his response until he had had a puff of the heavy, flavorful smoke.

"Depends on what you'd be putting down as collateral, and I already believe I have your ass and your soul."

Drunken laughing, accented by rowdy hands smacking the table, which sent the beer splattering upwards before adding to the already sticky mess on the table. Kurt had already had his customary shot of vodka he drank whenever he came out here, to take the edge off as well as ensure that he was accepted among this crowd, and was now having his late night snack of nicotine while the rest of the group was consuming everything from caviar to nachos.

"Speaking of ass, Hummel - the stage is for you."

Inwardly he let out a sigh, knowing that he would have to feign interest in whatever poor soul they had there for the sake of his image, but outwardly he let his eyes travel to the sight in question, and that's when his heart seemed to stop.

He had seen that boy before.

He had heard that boy before.

Hell, he had touched that boy before.

Back in a different life, when life was so innocent that he hadn't ever felt the touch of another man against him, nor considered anything outside of Broadway or fashion for a career. Back when the biggest concern in his life was not whether or not to arm himself for a meeting, but what song he was going to sing for a stupid club he had been a part of in high school.

"My name's Blaine."  
"Kurt."

He gulped, and the guys at his table chuckled and from the corner of his eye he saw them nudging one another and whispering something to the effect of, "Think we know Hummel's type now, eh?"

And while they weren't entirely wrong, they also weren't entirely right either. It wasn't the small, slim body that Kurt found himself staring at - though the night after he had met Blaine it was something he had fantasized about - nor was it the soft olive skin that flowed into red that was the cock Kurt had equally dreamed of that same night, but the caramel eyes that stared out at nothing, vacant and lifeless.

They had been so alive and bright when he had been singing in the hall at Dalton, and Kurt had convinced himself that Blaine had been singing to him in that moment. Kurt had thought that the things he had been going through at school then was the worst life could throw at him, and that song and those eyes had made him forget for a few minutes.

He had run afterwards, despite Blaine calling him back to talk. As soon as they had stopped singing, someone identified him as a singer for McKinley's glee club and instead of facing the music, so to speak, he had run like a coward. He ignored Blaine's calls, and returned to the school, both feeling guilty for running, and for spying in the first place.

Kurt had meant to return. He had meant to apologize to the Warblers, and especially to Blaine, but that was when Kurt realized that life could actually get worse than he had been feeling it was.

"Kurt… your dad…"  
"He's had a heart attack."  
"I'm sorry Kurt. He's gone."

He was only supposed to have lost his mother. That should have been the end of it, but it seemed like Kurt had done something awful in a past life because it didn't seem like karma was on his side. For the second time in his life, he buried a parent.

It did mean he realized his dream of going to New York though, just not in the way he intended. With his grandparents too old and relying on government pensions to make ends meet, it was decided he'd move in with his Aunt Mildred and Uncle Andy in Brooklyn. That was when his life took another dramatic turn.

There was a reason, he discovered, that he had never gone out to visit his aunt and uncle at their home and they had only ever come to Ohio. It had to do with the same reason his dad scowled whenever Uncle Andy sent Kurt wads of cash for Christmas and his birthday, and the same reason why his mom and dad had fought over having Andy and Mildred stay with them during holidays.

Oh. His Aunt and Uncle were kind to him, and certainly accepting of his homosexuality, that wasn't it at all. But, within the first week of living with them, when Uncle Andy had his friends over for their weekly poker game, the direction of Kurt's life became very clear.

Uncle Andy was deeply involved in a crime syndicate, specifically when it came to loan sharking. Kurt was invited to serve the men at poker, having to gasp for breath in order to breathe over their smoking, and bite his tongue at their prolific cursing. He had nearly fainted when one of the guys talked about making a hit, though it didn't happen until he was in the kitchen and connected the dots to realize the man wasn't talking about baseball.

That night he had confronted his uncle, who had been indifferent to the whole barrage of threats and insults Kurt flung at him before simply stating, "you're in this family, Kurt. You can't get out."

There was no out, he discovered. The whole brotherhood they had going was run on fear, and Kurt was simply told he had two choices - join his mother and father, or join them.

Again, like a coward running from Blaine and the Warblers, he took the easy way out.

Now his past was slumped over on his knees, being prodded at by a couple interested old geezers, and blankly facing him. The life had been sapped from his eyes, replaced with fogged up glass, and, without realizing he was doing it, Kurt stood up and left the table, approaching the stage as interested parties made their bids.

"Fifty!"  
"Sixty!"  
"Sixty-five!"

They were speaking in terms of thousands of course, and the closer Kurt got, the more his body moved of its own volition and the more urgently his heart pounded in his chest. From here, Kurt could see Blaine tremble in place, drugged enough to be compliant, but not enough to numb the fear inside him.

As if he were a dog, the filthy old men pawed at him, and made their bids, each one higher than the last. It didn't go as high as those for the women, but it was certainly higher than most of the men Kurt had seen pass through this place - and these men didn't even know sweet this boy was, or how serenely he sung. Yet, Kurt knew he wasn't a boy. Blaine had to be his own age, or at least around it, but Blaine didn't have the dark circles under his eyes Kurt had, nor did he have the frown lines. He looked younger, either by the effect of Kurt's memory, or by the lack of his involvement in these circles that prematurely aged everyone Kurt knew. Whatever the case was, Blaine was no longer the vision of a strong older male that Kurt had seen at Dalton. Now the tables had turned and he knew he was the more aged one, if simply because of his power base.

"Seventy!"  
"Seventy-two!"  
"Seventy-five!"

"Two hundred."

The rapid bidding wars ceased just like that as Kurt now stood in front of the heaped pile of Blaine, and hands were thrown up in resignation as the men who had been bidding withdrew their interest. A knock sounded and someone called out that Kurt had made the winning bid, though who was in question as Kurt's eyes remained fixated on memory that was at his feet, along with a simple, sobering thought.

Now what?


	2. Chapter 2

After Kurt signed the papers and did a wire transfer to the account given to him, he returned to the table he had come from, putting back on his face of indifference and forced amusement at the chuckles and jokes that came from his associates.

"Those are some sweet lips there, Hummel."  
"Bet it was that nice curvy ass."  
"Even I would tap that."  
"What're you going to do with him, Kurt?"  
"What'ya mean what is he going to do with him? What do you THINK he'll do with him?"  
"Put a bag over that guy's head and he looked like a woman with no tits and a dick."  
"So he looked like a man then."  
"Fuck you."

They lingered on the topic of Kurt's purchase for far too long, despite Kurt not engaging them in any of it. Behind the curtain Kurt knew vaguely about what was happening. Blaine would be washed down, and then the in-house doctor would implant a microchip in him - like a pet, which was what people called their human purchases. It was with those chips they tracked and controlled their Pets, ensuring that they didn't run away, or alert the authorities to their business.

Blaine wouldn't come home with Kurt either. To ensure security and maintain discretion, Blaine would be dropped off later, and Kurt was glad for the small reprieve. He still didn't know what he had done, and his mind was racing with conflicts. His whole existence was built around making profit, but buying a pet, especially one that clearly tied him to a past that he had kept securely under wraps, was an emotional gamble as well as a financial one. There was more risk than potential reward. Besides, prostitutes were cheaper and probably more willing than Blaine was when it came to what the guys at Kurt's table were suggesting. Kurt had never seen the point in keeping a human pet before, and his logical mind was insisting that he go and demand a refund because this was all clearly a very poor decision on his part.

He didn't though. Kurt just continued to sip back puffs of cigar smoke and give periodic nods to the company he was keeping. The longer he put off going home, the longer he had to consider what he had done and how to address it. He could, of course, just have Blaine function as help around the apartment, but he already had maid service - and very good service at that, which he had gone to great lengths to find. When one dealt in the underworld as much as he did, he put a good deal of effort into completing background checks on anyone who entered his home when he wasn't there. Not only did he find his maid to be someone who kept secrets, but he also had discovered a few of her own secrets to hold over her if the need necessitated it.

Kurt wasn't above blackmail.

Eventually though, his company left for their own homes (or that of their mistresses), and Kurt begrudgingly got up and nodded towards the man at the exit when he asked if they could send over the "package" in about an hour. His chauffeur was waiting outside in the classic black cadillac, patient as ever, ready to take Kurt wherever he needed day or night. Kurt had long ago stopped wondering what else this man did except for drive Kurt where he wanted to go, and assumed he probably napped in the vehicle when Kurt was occupied. The man had no family, at least not in the country, and had been the driver of a colleague of Kurt's before Kurt had hired him on as his exclusive chauffeur. Whatever the man did to pass the time was of no interest to Kurt though, and neither was talking to him during long drives. Kurt still didn't trust the man to keep any secrets, and so Kurt didn't willingly share anything with him.

Once Kurt began to bring in a decent amount of money, he had left the home of his aunt and uncle and bought his own apartment suite in a development constructed and managed by the syndicate. He technically had two floors, though it was designed as a loft, and his floor would have been the penthouse had he not also purchased the penthouse and redesigned it as an office. Only he had free access to those top floors, and anyone who he invited up was escorted by the elevator man who also doubled as one of Kurt's personal security guards.

By the time he arrived home, Kurt was in full panic mode. Certainly not on the outside, as he never let his feelings show, but definitely on the inside. He had no guest room, no place for Blaine to stay, and he still hadn't figured out why he had purchased Blaine. His apartment was his place of sanctuary, and aside from briefing his bodyguards on risky meetings, no one else had been in there aside from him. Not his aunt or uncle, not his "friends", and definitely not any prostitutes he had hired to take the edge off when he was stressed. His brain flipped through every possible item he might have that Blaine could use against him - both as a weapon, or as blackmail, and grabbed his hair to tug at it in frustration. Why the hell had he done this?

Kurt didn't have time to go through his home though as the intercom rang and the "shipping company" announced themselves as having a package for him. He called the guard in the elevator to let him know to bring them up and paced back and forth in the kitchen. How was he supposed to manage this? What was he to say to Blaine? Would Blaine even remember him? What would that do to his image?

No answers came to mind though, and his front door buzzed. With a sigh, he brushed a hand through his hair and informed his body it would need to be calm.

He expected Blaine to meet him when he opened the door, but instead he was greeted by a man he recognized from the meat market, dressed now in a dark tan outfit meant to mimic a courier uniform. A clipboard with a form was handed over to him and Kurt scanned it over, signing at the bottom where it asked for it to document that the "package" had been received.

Then the box was wheeled in on a dolly. Kurt watched it as it was moved into the center of his entrance and then set down while the man handed Kurt a key for use on a discrete lock on the side of the box.

"How many exits do you have?"

Kurt gave his head a small shake, jolting himself out of his stunned stare at the box and looked back at the man. "That front door and windows in most every room."

"Okay. I need to go around and set the perimeter for his chip."

The man must have taken Kurt's silence as permission, and began to roam around the apartment, entering data into a tablet he held with little bleeps and boops. Despite his intrusion into Kurt's personal space though, Kurt was completely focused on the box. He looked down at the key in his hand and then back at the box. That key was all that separated him from Blaine, and yet he couldn't seem to force himself to take the steps forward to unlock the damned thing.

Considering he had no problem walking to the stage to buy Blaine, Kurt couldn't understand why his body was reluctant to move now.

"Okay man. All set. Here's his file…" The man handed Kurt a heavy beige envelope and nodded towards the box. "... and he's all yours. Any questions?"

"No. I'm fine."

The man knew his place and left without expecting a thank you that wasn't going to come, leaving Kurt alone with the key and the box.

A box that held a man that was once the boy Kurt had dreamt about.

"Damn it, Hummel. Get your shit together. You damn near own this city. This changes nothing," he told himself, forcing his body to move, to insert the key into the lock and turn it.

Kurt didn't know what he expected, but when he opened the little door and saw Blaine laying down, crumbled into a small fetal ball and staring out at nothing and not even registering Kurt or the light that flooded the box, Kurt felt let down.

"Can you move?"

No response.

"Can you hear me?"

No response.

"Do you know who I am?"

Still… no response.

Kurt sighed, growled in frustration, and reached into the box to yank the man out by the shoulders. Blaine flopped like a rag doll against Kurt, and tucking his arms under Blaine's knees and back, Kurt frowned at just how easy it was to pick Blaine up and carry him to the couch where he laid him down. Throughout the whole move, Blaine didn't protest, didn't move at all, and just continued to stare through vacant eyes at the ceiling.

Whatever drugs they had used, they were potent.

They did, however, give Kurt a chance to go through his home. He collected all his knives, all his guns, and anything else he thought could be used against him, and put them into his safes, which he also had scattered throughout the apartment. He found some old clothing in his workout room which he dressed Blaine in, who again did not react, and put a blanket over top of the man, even though he wasn't sleeping.

"God damn it… what am I supposed to do with you?" Kurt grumbled, standing over Blaine and looking down at him.

As expected, he got no response.

The file, which Kurt had set down on top of the now empty box while collecting Blaine, called to Kurt and so he went to open it, sitting at his kitchen table and pouring over the contents. A birth certificate, a social insurance number, a clean bill of medical health, school transcripts, and every document that could ever be connected to Blaine. Kurt learned that Blaine was a year younger than he was, and that after graduating from high school, he had come to New York to attend NYADA as a musical theater major. There was a break in Blaine's family history, a separation from his family that seemed to occur following his high school graduation, and Kurt puzzled over if it had to do with Blaine's choice of college program given how his family seemed to come from old money. Blaine was also related to one Cooper Anderson, who was a B-grade actor in Hollywood, and Kurt nibbled along his lower lip as he wondered how someone who had such lofty family connections could just go missing like Blaine must have in order to end up in the meat market. By the time they ended up there, they were usually off the radar for a while.

What added more intrigue, given Kurt's history with Blaine, was that Blaine was an American citizen. Lots of the individuals who ended up being sold on the meat market were from out of country, having been rerouted in their attempts to escape whatever country they had come from. Kurt had financed enough purchases from the market to know that having a citizen up for purchase was both incredibly rare, and incredibly risky. They were the exotic species in the human market.

Which could only spell more trouble for Kurt.

A small whimper and a cry made Kurt lift his head from where the papers were now spread over the table, being sorted into piles that made sense to Kurt. He stood up and returned to the living room, where Blaine was finally showing some semblance of consciousness, hugging the throw pillow to his chest and looking towards Kurt as he entered with huge blackened eyes.

"Sebastian? Where are we?"

"I'm not Sebastian," Kurt asserted plainly and sighed inwardly at the sight before him. He hated dealing with emotional people, and drugged up emotional people were even worse.

"Sebastian… please…"

"Do you want some water?"

"I don't want to go… Sebastian… Sebastian please…"

Blaine tightened his grip on the pillow and Kurt shook his head, making a mental note to check for someone named Sebastian in the file. Blaine was clearly hallucinating, and ultimately still not with it enough to have a conversation with, so, realizing there was little he could do, Kurt returned to the table and tuned out the sobs and cries for a person Kurt wasn't. Looking over the documentation, the name Sebastian was quickly visible.

He was the one that had surrendered Blaine to the meat market.


	3. Chapter 3

At some point, Kurt dozed off while reviewing the papers, hunching over the table top with his cigarette slowly fizzling out in the ashtray at his side, filling his dreams with thickly scented smoke that permeated not only what he smelled in slumber, but also the look of his dreams with heavy, grey fog. In those dreams, he was in a large room, empty aside from the fog that swirled around him, suffocating him and limiting his field of vision. He was alone.

But that was nothing new.

A small, still voice was what woke him, and for a moment he thought it was part of his dreams until his eyes snapped open and he lifted his head from the table, where it had fallen to face the man he had set on the couch earlier. Blaine stood at the open, arching entrance to the dining room from the living room where he had come, arms wrapped around his waist like they could protect him, and looking at Kurt curiously.

"Sorry to wake you… but… who are you? Why am I here?"

So the drugs had worn off, at least enough for Blaine to regain control of his motor and verbal skills, and now he looked at Kurt with confusion and worry smattered over his mediterranean quality features. In the dim light, Kurt couldn't see the amber of Blaine's eyes, just the black pupils set against white. As always, Kurt took his time with his answers, thinking them over before speaking and lighting a fresh cigarette with a roll of his thumb over his lighter as he considered how to approach Blaine with the information. He had two options - be direct, or be more subtle. In either case, there were considerations and consequences to be had.

"Uhm… did you hear me? I-"

"I heard you," Kurt snapped, cutting Blaine off. He wasn't used to being interrupted during his thought process, and whether or not Blaine knew that wasn't a reason for him to get away with it. A long, drawn out puff of cigarette smoke put Kurt's mind and body at ease with the way it coursed through his brain and dried out his throat, and he watched Blaine shuffle uncomfortably in place, eyes dropping to the white tiled floor as Kurt raked his eyes over his body.

"I bought you. You belong to me."

Kurt had already considered the different reactions Blaine could respond with. The first was rage, the second was freaking out, and the third, which is exactly how Blaine responded, was disbelief.

"You're joking right?"

"No," Kurt said, continuing on after he had taken in another circle of smoke that seared into his lungs and only a regular smoker could find satisfying. "I own you."

"Slavery is illegal."

"Yet it's more prolific in this day and age than it ever has been. There's about 25 million slaves in the world and it generates about 35 billion in revenue each year globally." Another puff of smoke, another burn to caress him from the inside out.

"You… you can't own me. It makes no sense…" Blaine uttered, a waver in his silken voice. He took a step backwards and looked behind him, no doubt to look for an exit to run to. Let him, Kurt thought to himself. It would do him no good and he'd learn the reality of his situation quickly.

Which is exactly what Blaine did when Kurt arched an eyebrow his way, his way of judging without using words, prompting the expected reaction of Blaine running to the door. Kurt didn't stand to stop him as he ran slightly off kilter, probably still affected by the drugs in his system. Instead Kurt just continued sucking back the smoke as Blaine yanked open the front door and stepped out.

And screamed.

Kurt knew well enough what happened, and he snubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray before walking slowly to the entrance where Blaine has crumbled into a heap at the threshold, holding his hands over his ears as tears marked the corners of his eyes. Kurt couldn't hear it, or feel it, but he knew from what he heard that to stop human product from running, their trackers were equipped with military quality perimeter deterrents. When the delivery guy had come and checked out Kurt's apartment, he had also programmed in the boundaries for Blaine to exist in, and the instant he tried to escape, he set off an internal siren and nerve stimulus that essentially paralyzed him.

"It will keep on going until you are completely inside the apartment," Kurt noted stiffly, refraining from showing any compassion though a part of him wanted to reach out to Blaine to pull him back. "If you aren't completely within the apartment after a minute, enforcers will be sent to your location."

"Wha- what is this? Why?" Blaine cried out, wincing with the ejection of each word and gritting his teeth after he had spat it all out.

"Thirty seconds now give or take."

"Y-you can't!"

"Fifteen."

With a cry of anguish, Blaine shuffled himself backwards on the floor, and Kurt closed the door after him. The alarm within him must have stopped because he laid on the floor, panting and catching his breath for a moment before rolling his eyes to look up towards Kurt, towering over him, and struggling to get back onto his feet and stand.

Men were all the same. When they were put into a confrontational situation, they wanted to be face to face. They held their territory, their ground, and may as well have urinated all over it like a dog on a hydrant the way they postured, forcing themselves past any discomfort and fear to go eye to eye with the ones they saw as their problem. Blaine was no different, and though he was considerably weakened by the drugs and the alarm, he still tried to make himself look bigger and act bigger than he was.

"I'll call the cops."

"Go ahead. Most of them work for me or my associates."

"I'll send a message... on your computer…"

"I don't keep one in my apartment."

"You can't keep me."

"You can't escape."

Blaine faltered for a moment, eyes going blank again as he went inside himself to seek out a solution, and Kurt returned to the table to light up a fresh cigarette, despite only having burnt off half of the last one.

"Is Sebastian okay?"

Kurt glanced over his shoulder, where Blaine had crept up on him, though maintained a distance of a meter. Where he had just been defiant, his face was now wrinkled with worry.

"He's employed."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he found a way to work off his debts."

"What debts?"

Kurt let his eyes roll along the top of his eyes before looking back at the papers, gesturing towards them for Blaine to see. "The ones that had him sell you to try and cover the interest costs."

Blaine looked warily at the mess of paperwork, then back up to Kurt, before shuffling forwards and looking down at the paper, just a foot away from Kurt's side. Quietly he scanned what he could see and then shook his head. "No… it doesn't make sense. Sebastian had lots of money. He can't be in debt."

"Tell me Blaine. Why did you go to Cuba with Sebastian?"

"He… he really wanted to go on a humanitarian mission there. We were helping at an orphanage…"

"But you were in college."

"How do you…?" Blaine glanced questioningly from Kurt and then again to the papers, making a small o with his mouth as he understood and looked back the floor. "He convinced me to take a break from it…"

"And then he just as quickly convinced you to come back to New York."

"He said he had family problems…" Blaine uttered, his voice quieting with each spoken syllable.

"Sebastian owed several of the families big money for gambling debts. He took you with him to Cuba to try and evade them, but they're not stupid. They found him and threatened him if he didn't return - and the first thing he did when he returned was to sell you-"

"NO!" Blaine snapped, and Kurt did his best to not let his eyebrows lift to reveal his surprise at the outburst. "Sebastian is a good person and my friend! He wouldn't do that to me!"

"Sebastian is a con and a liar, and because of that I own you now."

"No… no… no, he's not…" Blaine choked out, running away from Kurt.

Kurt listened as Blaine checked each room, ran up the stairs to the loft and checked all the rooms. As he sat at the table, restacking the papers that constituted Blaine's existence, he listened to the shuffling, the running around, the cries, and the mess that was no doubt created in the wake of a man who was realizing that he wasn't dreaming, and that he was duped by someone he obviously trusted a little too much.

Kurt smoked through all of it. He had discovered cigarettes not long after uncovering the truth about his uncle, and despite despising them and the cancer they stood for all through his young years, he took to them quickly - finding comfort in the way they inflamed him from the inside, making him feel like his body was alive despite all other evidence to the contrary. Since his father's death, he felt like he was a soul loosely inhabiting an unwilling body, and the only way he felt connected to the meat on him was through that smoke. Cancer be damned.

When the noises stopped, and Kurt finished off yet another cigarette, he stood up and went to the library where he found Blaine sitting on the ground, back against Kurt's shelves dedicated to financial management, and staring up at the ceiling.

"How do I get out of this? Can I?"

"Some do."

"How do I?"

Kurt went to sit on the couch in the library - an old, antique style couch popularized in Freud's time as one used for counselling. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but it tied the room together nicely - or so he thought. "Not sure."

"Do I... have to earn my way out or something?"

"Maybe."

"Why won't you give me a straight answer?"

Kurt leaned back on the arm of the seat, glancing out of the window behind him and into the New York skyline. No matter what time it was, the city always glowed with life. "Because I didn't intend to purchase a slave, so I haven't completed my research on the matter."

"Then why did you buy me…?"

Kurt glanced back at Blaine, eyes narrowing at he looked at him, irritation growing within him as he realized that while he recognized Blaine, Blaine clearly didn't recognize him. How stupid he had been to think that there had been something between them during that brief, adolescent meeting. What an idiotic mistake he had made…

"It was a mistake."

"If it was a mistake, let me go."

Kurt snickered at that. Blaine obviously had been sheltered enough not to know about how the mob worked out in New York, or anywhere for that matter. There was no just "letting someone go". That was not how debts were settled. That was not how the mob sent messages about crossing them. There were rules, codes, and while Kurt was not a made man, he was an associate of all the major New York families and other syndicates that ran different territories. He had an image to maintain, and that image was ruthless.

"You'll have to work off your debts like most do."

"How?"

"I'm not sure yet. Most of the women end up working in brothels or strip clubs until they're too loose or worn out to be of use -"

Kurt didn't miss how Blaine shuddered at that and then tensed right up.

"- some of the human product ends up functioning as enforcement, others as maids or general servants…"

"Maybe-"

"Don't interrupt me," Kurt snapped, wincing his eyes into lines once more as he glowered at Blaine before continuing. "You're too small and frail to be an enforcer, and, somehow, I think that your privileged background limits whatever homemaking skills you might think you possess."

"I won't have sex with you."

Kurt made a small snort at that, though the statement tore at him a little right under the ribs. "Pretentious, aren't you? What makes you think I'm interested in you that way?"

"The men… at that place… were all touching me…"

"I didn't."

Blaine glanced up, and Kurt caught the reflection of the city in Blaine's eyes. "No. You didn't."

"Quite frankly, I haven't had enough time to judge what skills would be of use to me that you might actually possess. Your transcripts and background suggest limited employability options."

Blaine's crooked, fuzzy eyebrows squinted at that, and his lips turned down in a frown. "I went to college to work at what I love… what I want to do… what I'm good at…"

Kurt would have loved to have attended NYADA, to have a chance at the stage, or maybe even the screen. It wasn't fair that this kid, whose parents were both still alive but out of the picture for some reason, who could afford a specialized college like NYADA, who probably skated through life with ease, got the opportunities Kurt would have begged for.

"... and a fat lot of good it did for you. By the time I figure out what to do with you, you'll be too old to find a spot on stage."

Part of Kurt delighted in the way Blaine's whole face seemed to fall, to try and drip off his skull at those words, but another part cringed. Within him, somewhere, was that boy who believed in righteousness, and kindness, and all the fluff taught in kindergarten classes - and that boy couldn't believe the words that came out of his mouth.

Would his dad recognize him if he were alive? Would he know the man Kurt had become from the boy he was?

No. Not the way Kurt reveled in how he could twist sadness and submission out of a man sitting on the floor that had once made him forget all his pains for a day. Not only would his dad not recognize him, he wouldn't even like him.


	4. Chapter 4

Blaine's mind was cycling as fast as it could. It hurt, sore aches blooming between his temples in incomprehensible patterns, but he needed it to think, to analyze, to find a way out of this place and this situation. Of course this guy, who looked at him, and everything for that matter, like it was below him, would try to convince him there was no way out. There had to be a way out. If he could just calm his nerves, and get his senses in order, he could figure it out. He knew he could.

He had been valedictorian after all, at a prestigious private school at that. He had continually had top grades at NYADA. He was smart. He could tackle this problem just like he had so many others. Besides, that man, no matter what he acted like, was still human after all, and all humans had their weaknesses.

But his head hurt and the cigarette smoke that seemed to linger in in every single room of this much-too-large-for-an-apartment apartment was making it worse. Clearly the guy had money - if only to support a filthy habit that had all the ceilings in the place stained with brown and yellow.

"What about a payment plan? I could pay you back so much every month -"

"No." was the stern, simply reply. What did this guy have against real conversations anyhow? Why did he have to interrupt and dominate it all? How come he could interrupt but Blaine couldn't?

"Once I'm on Broadway though -"

"No. You don't leave here."

The thought sent chills up Blaine's spine and shivers down his arms. "You can't expect me to stay in here for the rest of my life!"

"Why not?"

Blaine didn't have an answer to give to that right away because the question made little sense enough for an answer to be drawn from it that made equal sense. He just watched with wide, watering eyes as the man drew a cigarette out of the pack he had in the pocket of his suit jacket and lit it with a silver lighter.

"... I'm not an animal…. you can't cage me…."

"This is hardly a cage. This is a luxury apartment with all the amenities. You'll have all the food you want, I will ensure your clothing is well tailored to your size, I have plenty of books in this library for you to read -"

"But no friends, no company, no freedom to do what I enjoy -"

He had interrupted him again, and the glare he got in return, so dark and dangerous, made his heart slam against his chest in order to stop himself from saying anything more.

"Millions of people on earth would be glad for this opportunity."

Blaine glanced down at the floor, shaking his head. Millions of people, but not him. He wanted the stage, an audience… he wanted to be seen, loved, and accepted. He wanted to walk down the street with his head held high and people looking his way in adoration because he would be THE Blaine Anderson. No food, shelter, or commodities would ever compare with that.

"Whatever. You better just get used to the idea. I have meetings in the morning so I'm going to bed."

The man stood up, and Blaine realized he didn't even know his name as he stormed off, feet hitting the hardwood a little too sharply with each step. He cringed when he heard the slam of a door, but Blaine didn't get up then, his mind trying to rake through everything he had just been through. His skin still crawled from the way men had touched him and he hadn't been able to do a thing about it. His arm still ached from where they had injected whatever wretched concoction that had left him feeling dull and soulless. His heart still strained as felt spooned away from the information the man had told him about Sebastian - which couldn't be true. Sebastian had always been his best friend, and even a little bit more in the past when Blaine had been curious. There was no way Sebastian could have done this to him. Clearly the man was lying to try and warp Blaine's perception of his friend.

When he heard snoring, and, god, what a gross snore it was with wheezing and hacking all built in, Blaine forced himself to stand up despite the protest of his body. The man clearly didn't care, and wasn't worried about Blaine being unattended in the house, which meant he probably didn't think he had anything to hide. Still, Blaine peeked through everything. There was lots of books on money management, and more still on the history of New York and its laws. There was little in the way of casual reading, and Blaine had to wonder if the man really thought Blaine would get any joy out of this textbook styled library.

He returned to the kitchen, his stomach growling. No use in protest fasting since he would need to keep his strength up to ensure he was ready to fight or flee if the need arose. However, the kitchen was another let down. There was take out in the fridge, expired and stinky, along with different beers and wines. The pantry mostly had crackers, and the occasional worn looking box of cereal, which was what Blaine opted to chew on dry since there was no milk to be had. There was no way that this kitchen would satisfy most of the millions that the man had spoken of.

The papers on the table caught his attention though, and slipping into a seat in front of them, he went through each one, his heart speeding up as he did. It was a veritable paper trail of his existence. Medical records, birth certificate, social security number, high school and college transcripts - even photocopied notes from his therapist which should have been sealed and filed securely. There was also several pages of transaction records, and on them was Sebastian's name as the surrendering owner and one Kurt Hummel as the purchaser.

The man's name was Kurt.

Somehow that didn't fit. With the way he acted, Blaine thought he was more like a Guido or a Richard… something with more force behind it.

Kurt had paid over two hundred thousand for him. There were checkmarks in boxes that had obscure things like microtagging, GPS tracking, and vaccinations. Attached to that group of papers was also a blood test, showing Blaine was clean and clear of all sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

The lying bastard did intend to sleep with him.

With all the strength he had available Blaine torn up that page, and then each of the other ones on the table until it was overflowing in shreds of paper that cascaded off one another and spilled out onto the floor around it. It wasn't right, nor was it fair that Blaine had done everything right, done everything in his power to be a decent human being, only to have this happen to him.

Anger overtook the calm acceptance, and Blaine stood and started yanking open the drawers in the kitchen as he stood up, throwing the contents out of each of them and then moving to the cupboards where he tossed the plates and cups and everything else he could down to the ground where they clattered and crashed.

As expected, lights flickered on and Kurt came bursting into the room, dark circles silhouetting under his wide, enraged eyes. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Blaine ignored him, continuing his parade of destruction. The little sense he had in his mind dictated that if he made trouble, maybe that would be enough for Kurt to reconsider "owning" him and let him free. Just as Blaine was about to toss a frying pan onto the shatters of dishes below him though, Kurt's hand grabbed his wrist and another hand grabbed at his hip, pulling him first up and then backwards, away from the disaster he was responsible for, and as Blaine kicked and cried out to free himself the hold only became tighter.

It was in that way that he was taken away from the kitchen and tossed to the couch in the living room where he yelped on impact, his shoulder hitting the wall before his body fell into the cushions below. Instead of rushing away though, Blaine did what he had earlier resolved not to do. He cried, into the musty smelling brown fabric that held him. He cried for his freedom, for Sebastian, and even spat out like a toddler how unfair it all was. Blaine didn't notice until his nerves pricked in his toes that Kurt was picking out bits of broken ceramics and glass that he had gotten embedded in his feet, and once he did notice he looked at the scene over his shoulder with wide, terrified eyes.

"Do I have to hire a fucking babysitter for you? Honestly… what the fuck… a grown man throwing a tantrum. Fucking insane…" Kurt snapped to himself as he pulled out shard after shard and piled them up on the coffee table. When his feet, bleeding out of every possible point now, were cleared of the sharpnel, Kurt stood up and wagged a finger at him.

"Stay the fuck there. I'm getting bandages…. fucking dumb ass…"

So Blaine watched him walk away, eyes still round as saucers and wondering what had overcome him. He knew he should be mad, logically speaking, and certainly shouldn't be accepting of his state - but he also knew, now that rationality was returning to him, that he shouldn't have freaked out either. Kurt was tied to the mafia after all. Based on everything he had ever heard or read, he should have been sporting a bullet in his brain for that outburst.

Yet Kurt returned to him, holding a first aid kit and very carefully wiping down his wounds with an antiseptic cloth before putting on a dozen bandaids which comically covered up the majority of his feet in the end. It was the last thing Blaine expected of him, especially considering his own actions, and as he watched Kurt he had to wonder if he knew him from somewhere else because the way his eyes quavered while he worked seemed to bring up a sense of nostalgia for a time before within Blaine, and Blaine couldn't figure out why.

Whatever memory tried to stir within Blaine though was abruptly silenced as Kurt slid his arms under Blaine and scooped him up, bridal style, without any warning.

"What the heck are you doing?!"

"You clearly need supervision." Kurt grumbled, carrying Blaine across the floor and then up the stairs to the loft with an ease Blaine wouldn't have expected from him. Kurt wasn't the biggest or most muscular guy, but he definitely had strength to be picking up another grown man who was squirming at the indignity of it.

"Let me go!"

"You need to sleep." Kurt snarled, kicking open the door to his room with his foot and then setting Blaine into the bed there. "And I can't trust you on your own clearly."

"I told you! I won't have sex with you!" Blaine argued as he set his feet to the ground and cringed at the sharp spikes of pain that travelled up his legs.

"Actually you told me you won't sleep with me. Regardless, I'm not interested in sex with you, but I am interested in salvaging the rest of my apartment. You will sleep beside me or I will do what other owners do and get chains for you."

Blaine's eyes, which really hadn't closed at all since they had gone wide downstairs, burst into full blooms of white at the image that presented to him. As if being forced into slavery wasn't bad enough… being chained up was completely humiliating to even consider. "You wouldn't…."

"Piss me off again and you'll see just what I would and wouldn't do. Now lay the fuck down, go to sleep, and shut up. I told you I have a meeting in the morning."

Blaine weighed his options in his mind, but with Kurt staring down at him, his feet feeling like they were on fire, and the threat posed to him, he scurried back on his hands and laid down flat on top of the covers as close to the edge of the bed as he could muster without actually falling off.

It seemed to appease Kurt though, whose whole body lost some tension when Blaine obeyed, and who crawled onto the other side of the bed under the covers. True to what he said, he didn't make any moves on Blaine, and soon Blaine was listening to the rattles and quakes of Kurt's snoring as he stared up at the ceiling, once again trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Blaine did when he woke up was mentally berated his body for falling asleep in the first place. He wanted to stay awake. He wanted to be alert. He didn't want to seem complacent or complicit. Yet he had fallen asleep and the first thing he noticed when he awoke that was a blanket had been thrown over him completely.

The second thing was that he was alone in the bed.

The ache in his head had pulled away, leaving behind an echo of pain that he still could feel when he moved his head too fast, like he did when he glanced around the room to see if Kurt was anywhere around him. He was alone though, aside from the light pouring in from the window that took up the whole wall on one side of the room, a room that was bigger than his whole suite in the NYADA dorms.

Kurt's side of the bed was a mess, and clearly he wasn't the kind of man that cleaned up after himself. Several ties hung over the edge of the bed, as well as the arm of a shirt that was now mostly hanging to the floor. The bedside table wasn't much better. On it was not just one, but two ashtrays heaped with cigarette butts, a half empty bottle of scotch, and few open bottles of asprin.

Clearly the guy had issues, not the least of which was purchasing other humans.

A sound from the lower level caught Blaine's attention then, and he hopped out of bed and scurried out of the room. It was at that point he could make out a woman's voice, cursing in a language he didn't know, and hope swelled up within him. Someone else was there. Someone could alert the authorities and get him out.

He followed the noise with his toes, feet still aching and swollen, and found himself in the entrance to the kitchen where a petite brunette, a little on the dumpy side, was sweeping up his mess from the night before. Her blue uniform, which looked a little like a more professional set of nursing scrubs, gave her away as hired help - but help was exactly what Blaine needed.

"Hey, hey… excuse me. You need to help me. I've been kidnapped, or bought rather… illegally. They guy here - he's a criminal and-"

"NO." Was the firm, stiff reply of the woman who looked up to him with narrowed eyes, wagging a dustpan towards him like a scolding finger. "You no talk to me."

"But-"

"No!" She admonished him again, her accent heavy on her lips. "You go now. I work."

"I can't go though I-"

"No! No, no, no, no." She insisted, shooing him off now with the broom and dustpan. "Mista' Hummel say no talk you. You go 'way."

"But he's -"

"NO!"

Blaine's hands balled into frustrated fists which he shook at his sides. His teeth squeaked together under the pressure of him grinding them together. How to make her understand…

But Blaine had no time to think, nor to argue. A voice came over an intercom he didn't know existed and he jumped in place when he heard it.

"Leave her alone Blaine. She's just there to clean."

Shit. There was microphones or camera in this place, enough for Kurt to know what he was trying to do, not that the maid was having any of his attempts to have her act on his behalf. Angrily he spun on his heels, yelling up at the ceiling since he wasn't quite sure where the speaker was that had projected Kurt's voice.

"You can't keep me here!"

There was silence in response, and that aggravated Blaine even more than if Kurt had replied. The silent treatment was something his mother had used on his dad when they had fought, or what Blaine's female friends did to their boyfriends when they were upset. It wasn't supposed to happen between two men who were not in a relationship and in which one had decided they owned the other.

"Answer me!"

But Kurt was silent, and the maid continued on her cleaning. In a way Blaine felt bad that someone else was dealing with the mess he made, on the other hand he felt like she deserved it since she wasn't helping him out anyhow. If anything he should smash more plates for her to clean up.

Again though, he wasn't given the opportunity to consider acting as the front door swung open and Blaine rushed to see if it was someone new who could help him, but found himself faced again with the man he least wanted to see.

Kurt.

"What the hell? You're not satisfied to trap me against my will that you have to spy on me too?!"

Kurt's eyes looked down at Blaine, as if he were something boring and dull, and then lifted as he let out a low sigh. "I had the security system installed when I moved into here. This is the first time it's activated to noise."

"Oh? And you just HAPPENED to be right outside when it happened?" Blaine snapped, wagging a finger at Kurt.

"No. I happened to be in my office upstairs."

The complete monotone of Kurt's high voice and the way with which he looked at Blaine indifferently when he said it, along with the knowledge that Blaine wasn't going to be able to be too far away from Kurt even when he was working made Blaine's stomach harden and sink within his abdomen. He needed to sit to deal with the weight inside him and yet he wanted to rush through the door behind Kurt, to see if that siren inside him still turned on if he did.

Yet he didn't dare.

"Unless you intend to clean the apartment for me, do not distract my maid, and I also wouldn't advise bothering others who come by here because they all work with or for me. They know you exist, and in what capacity you're here, and they won't be receptive to your pleas for assistance. The sooner you accept your situation, the better off you'll be."

Blaine lifted his eyes, using them to glare at Kurt and show just how much he thought of what Kurt was saying. Like hell he was going to accept this as his life now or ever. There were laws in place against this kind of thing, and once Blaine figured out how to get out of this place, he was going to bring down the full force of the justice system on this man.

"Now do I need to babysit you or do you think you can manage on your own for a bit?"

Babysit… as if he were a child and not a full adult man with rights and freedoms.

"Let me go."

"No."

Kurt left then, giving Blaine no chance to respond and letting the door click and lock shut behind him The maid followed soon thereafter as Blaine stood staring at the door that they seemed to have no problem passing through, but had caused him unspeakable agony.

Yet he had recovered….

If it meant freedom in the end, the means would have to justify the end, and the pain that had exploded in his head when he went through the door would be worth it. With a deep breath, Blaine stepped forward, opened the door and….

…. fell to the ground screaming as the banshee cry shot between his ears just like it had the night before. It was all he could hear, and his eyes teared up from the intensity. Palms covered his ears in an attempt to block out the noise but because the sound was internal, it didn't work. A small part of his brain reminded him that he would have to somehow work through the pain in order to get out, and so he slowly squirmed his body forward, so that half of his body was out of the door and the other half was still inside. If he could keep moving - he could do this. He just had to keep….

The thrumming in his head got worse with each centimeter he pushed himself forward, and the tears flowed out of his straining eyes like the spray of a hose. He could taste iron on his tongue, and knew he was just making things worse for himself, but he had gotten that far, surely he could go further?

But as much as he wanted to keep going, his brain had enough, and clicked off, taking him with it. Down he spiralled, into a dreamless sleep, and only surfaced again much later with his head still aching and his body still sore, though now he was back on the bed he had begun his day at, and the cry from within his brain had stopped.

Blaine's eyes felt dry when he opened them, and the light from the room made them feel like they were burning backwards into his skull so he shut them quickly and let out a soft groan. His noise alerted someone close to him, and he felt a weight shift on the other side of the bed and move closer to him as he tried to pull away from it.

"I will get someone to watch you if necessary."

Whatever fury had been contained by the soreness of his body came right back up below his skin on hearing Kurt's voice, and he tried to yank himself away from the cool cloth he felt being placed against his forehead - even though the sensation of the cold felt good.

"Jesus fucking…. stay still…."

"Let me go…."

Blaine almost didn't recognize his own voice as he spoke, and wondered if the screaming he had heard before was his own. Running through that door already felt like a dream, along with the suffering he had put himself through because of it. Nothing about this past day, or the night before, felt real. This was the stuff of fantasy and movies.

Kurt sighed close enough to him that Blaine could smell his nicotine stained breath and gagged from it, turning away involuntarily and moaning again at the way his brain seemed to slap against the side of his skull from the motion.

"I have groceries and new plates, plastic, being delivered within the hour, along with current top picks in fiction. Is there anything else I should call in for you?"

Blaine's mind spun around, wondering if he had missed a step in the sequence of their conversation, but realizing that Kurt was ultimately just redirecting it. "Yeah. The police."

"Alright then. I'll let you be for now…"

The bed shifted again and Blaine listened as footsteps led off into the hallway and down the stairs. Again he was alone. Dreadfully alone. For the past few years Blaine had always been surrounded by people. Other students, teachers, actors, singers, bands… he had been roomed in the NYADA dorms with three other boys since that's all he could afford on his own. When he wasn't at school he was working in a busy cafe, and when he wasn't there he was following Sebastian around along with all their theater friends. Even during their brief time in Cuba Blaine had been swallowed up by the crowds of people, of children, and other tourists.

It had been a long time since he had been alone for such a long stretch of time, and that had been purposeful too. When he had been alone, he had only himself to speak with, and he never had anything good to tell himself.

Even less now.

Blaine cried again quietly, not wanting to draw Kurt's attention. He wanted his freedom back. His freedom to be part of a flock that he could be hidden among. He didn't want this man's attention. He didn't want to have to be alone with his thoughts.

Eventually he gave himself a mental slap in the face and dragged himself out of the bed, cringing as his feet felt worse than they had in the morning when he stepped on them. There was an ensuite bathroom to Kurt's room, which Blaine used to wash his reddened, tear streaked face clean, though otherwise avoided looking at himself too long - afraid of seeing the failure his dad said he'd amount to if he went to New York. Then he went out of the room, down the stairs, and to the living area where Kurt was settled, flipping through a book on stocks and sipping a glass of something that Blaine was willing to bet was alcoholic. When he saw Blaine, he lifted his eyebrows slightly, but didn't otherwise acknowledge Blaine.

"What do I have to do to be free?"


	6. Chapter 6

The perpetual headache that Kurt had grown accustomed to spiked whenever Blaine pushed for his freedom or made demands, to the point where Kurt knew he was going to need to medicate himself more in order to handle this petulant man who didn't seem to appreciate that his circumstances at present could have been much, much worse.

When Kurt left in the morning and went to his office, the first thing he had done was look into the status of Sebastian, finding out where he was and what he was doing before the meat market manager reminded Kurt that if he was dissatisfied with his product, two of the would-be buyers had left their information and were willing to buy Blaine off him. It would have been for less than the price Kurt paid, of course, but that was all typical of how things operated in the underworld he dwelled in.

He did, though, take the information about those potential buyers and did his research on them. One was a brothel owner, as sketchy as they came, whose "employees" were typically of the illegal immigrant variety, hoping to earn their way to freedom in America. The other wasn't much better. Well known in the meat market circuit as someone who used his pet's until they were broken and then resold them to underground illegal drug testing rings as lab rats.

By comparison, what Blaine had with Kurt was the royal treatment. Yet here he was, once again, demanding to know how to be free.

"I don't know…" Kurt began with an irritated sigh as he snapped the book that he had been reviewing shut.

"Bullshit. I saw the papers. You want me to be your personal whore."

Kurt cringed with the interruption, and immediately his eyes narrowed and his voice filled with spit. "No. I don't. For starters - a decent whore is a lot cheaper than you were and quite willing and able to do anything I'd like with a smile on their damned faces."

There was a flicker in Blaine's eyes, one that Kurt couldn't pinpoint the reason to. However, since Blaine said nothing immediately to that information, Kurt continued.

"... and in the short time you've been here, you've caused more messes than cleaned up - so I'm sure as shit not going to have you clean."

"What's the point in keeping me if you don't want me for anything?"

A good question, and one Kurt had been inwardly searching for the answer to since he purchased Blaine.

"For your safety to begin with. There are some people who would still like to own you by any means necessary…"

"Bullshit."

It took everything in Kurt not to stand up and yell at Blaine with that latest interruption, but he managed to just ball his fists so tight the nails dug into his palms instead. "You have no fucking idea what kind of people I work with, so you'd better watch your tongue before I do sell you off to the next highest bidder."

That caught Blaine's attention, at least enough for him to take a step back and bite his tongue for a half second before uttering out, "I need to get out of here and make sure Sebastian is alright."

Kurt snorted. "Sebastian is fine. He's settling his debts."

"How can you know that?"

"I checked into it."

"Is he okay? Is he hurt? Did they do anything to him?" Blaine's voice changed, much to Kurt's annoyance, the instant he started focusing on his friend. How could Blaine not see that Sebastian was not worth the effort that he put into him?

"He is fine."

"Prove it to me."

Kurt rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket pocket for his pack of cigarettes. "No."

"I'll… do what you want… just show me that Sebastian is okay."

To that, Kurt lifted a solitary eyebrow,"Really?"

His action and question seemed to give Blaine worried pause, but after a drawn out second Blaine nodded,"Yeah… I need to know he's alright and safe…"

"Despite what he did to you?"

Blaine shook his head. "He didn't do that. It's made up. Sebastian is my friend."

How naive was Blaine to really think that? Didn't he see the papers? Didn't he trust what Kurt had told him?

Kurt sighed. Of course he didn't.

"Fine. Tomorrow."

He didn't miss how Blaine seemed to lift onto his toes at that pronouncement, nor did he miss the effort Blaine made to contain the excitement within him. "In the meantime, go put away the boxes of new dishes and groceries that were delivered while you were out."

To his surprise, Kurt got no argument from Blaine with that bit of direction, and the man stepped away without any word of complaint to tend to the kitchen and finally leave Kurt alone. Dealing with other people was taxing, especially since he had to do it all day for work, so he was not enjoying having his privacy infringed upon by having to care for another person.

Kurt went back to reading once he heard the cupboards open and close, along with the fridge. Stock markets weren't terribly exciting to him, but it was a necessary evil to understand with the financial management he did, and he needed to be the best at them to ensure the trust of his clients who were already fickle to begin with. Several more pages in, he noticed a smell coming from the kitchen, one he didn't immediately recognize, and shut his book once more to go investigate.

Blaine had put away everything as he had been told, but now was standing in front of the stove, stirring a medley of vegetables and meats in a frying pan while another pot bubbled on another burner. To say that Kurt didn't expect the sight was an understatement, and what he didn't expect either was the way his heart seemed to shoot up into his throat as he processed the image.

"What're you doing?"

"Cooking supper…" Blaine said simply, looking up and towards Kurt as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"... why?"

"Because it's that time of day and I'm hungry and you probably are too…"

Huh. Kurt tipped his head a little to the side, but didn't allow any other nonverbal cues to give away his surprise and delight. Not only was Blaine taking care of himself, but he had thought to make supper for Kurt too.

"I wasn't aware you cooked,"Kurt finally noted as he caught Blaine's questioning stare and went to the fridge to collect a bottle of water.

"Well, I don't have the luxury of having money to order in every day."

Kurt sighed as he unscrewed the cap of his water and took a sip, leaning back against the counter behind Blaine to watch him work. Kurt had once liked to cook, and had done so for his dad on so many occasions to try and have him eat healthier. Cooking now was just a reminder that he was only making food for himself and his efforts in life earlier hadn't worked the way he intended.

The meal was delicious, and Kurt had forgotten just how different a homecooked meal could be from one slathered in preservatives and sauces. If nothing else, Blaine could start being his personal chef and Kurt would be more than satisfied with it.

Except that he wouldn't be. He already knew that. He had lied when he told Blaine he didn't want to sleep with him and watching the other man eat, fixating on those plush lips as they chewed across from him, was torture.

"How are you going to take me anywhere when I can't get through the door?" Blaine asked once most of his plate had been emptied, and Kurt felt a pang of guilt go through him as he realized it was probably the first time Blaine had eaten since he arrived.

"I contact the market to let them know the path," Kurt said plainly. It was actually simpler than that, but he didn't want to let Blaine know considering how adamant Blaine seemed to be about escaping. If a third party seemed to be involved, it would make the risk of Blaine running less likely.

"How do I know you won't try to trick me?"

"You don't."

"Will I get to talk to him?"

"That's up to him."

"Well, then of course he'll talk to me!"

The amount of loyalty Blaine had to someone that had deceived him so badly was both admirable and ridiculous, and Kurt had to wonder what Sebastian had done to earn it, and what he could do, in turn, to have it redirected to him.

After a pause, Blaine changed the subject, though not to anything Kurt was any more comfortable speaking about.

"So you're a mobster."

"I'm an associate."

"Same thing."

"No… it's not really," Kurt grumbled, looking at his empty water bottle and wishing it was filled with something that had some burn to it.

"Do you kill people?"

"Not directly."

"Steal from people?"

"I handle their money."

"I thought gangs didn't use banks."

Kurt sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Look. There are plenty of books in my library on the history of the mafia in the United States. Go educate yourself while you're here so I don't have to function as a dictionary for you, or a mob encyclopedia. All you have to know is that I work with dangerous people."

"But you're not dangerous?" The question was asked in such a way that it bled of sarcasm, and the irritation Kurt was already trying to fend off grew.

"I am, just in a different way."

"So you're Italian."

"No… I…" Another forced sigh, another pinch to the top of his nose. "Look. I'm not a made man. I don't deal with just one family, I deal with them all, along with a lot of the ethnic mobs…"

"How do you even sleep at night? Is your mother proud of you?"

"My mother died when I was eight," Kurt announced flatly, glaring Blaine's way.

"Of course she did," was the snarky reply, Blaine glaring back at Kurt just as fiercely.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means you can't have had a mom to be capable of such things."

"From what I read, your mom wasn't terribly involved in your life either, and was quite alright with cutting you loose when you left for New York."

It was Blaine's turn to be reduced to silence then, his glare lingering for a moment before he looked down at his plate and picked over the remains of his food. "It's not fair that you know all that."

"And neither is it damned fair that you make assumptions about who I am and what I do based on what happened to me when I was younger. You didn't even know me then!"

Except that he did, at least for a moment, and that memory flickered through Kurt's brain with perfect clarity. Blaine didn't know it though, or at least it wasn't significant enough for him to remember it, and perhaps that was what hurt Kurt about it most of all - that he wasn't worth remembering to someone that had meant so much to him at one point in time.

* * *

**Warning: I'm gone for a week with a pack of my students on a conference in the wilderness, where the internet connectivity is sketchy at best. As such, don't hold out for updates until next weekend.**


	7. Chapter 7

Blaine, despite his urge to fight, to argue, and to resist playing nice with Kurt, is nothing if not logical. He can tell Kurt can be a fickle man from the way his hands form fists too easily and from the stain of frown marks beside the corners of his mouth, and Blaine can't risk losing the opportunity to see Sebastian, to try and figure out what's happened to them both, and see how he can fix it.

So Blaine makes the man supper, makes idle conversation, which he sometimes allows to turn into accusations when he forgets himself, and then agrees to once again share a loveless bed with the man keeping him captive. As it was the night before, Blaine stares up at the ceiling, listening to the grated breaths and wheezes of the other occupant who seems far too alright with having a body beside him, and thinking he'll never fall asleep.

He does though, and awakens this morning to Kurt calling out his name softly, in a sleep affected tone that sounds more gentle than Blaine knows the man to be. He gets up wordlessly, and watches as Kurt goes to the ensuite bathroom to shower. Blaine runs his tongue along the inside of his mouth, feeling how the plaque has built up on his teeth in the absence of brushing his teeth and flossing them according the schedule he has so carefully followed prior to this world he's found himself into. He feels gross, his hair matted in dry sweat and his body covered in the clothes of someone he is disgusted by. When Kurt exits the bathroom, covered by a robe, he nods towards the place he just came.

"Shower. Get yourself clean. I need to take care of a couple things in my office before we go."

Blaine again obeys, if only because he's at the point where he can't stand his own smell and allows himself the small joy of a hot shower and overpriced shampoos and soaps at his disposal. He stays in there until his skin is beyond pruned and his skin is red, until his bones are coals that carry the heat from the water. Only then does he exit and towel himself off.

Kurt hasn't left him a razor with which to shave, so Blaine accepts that he'll have to go with a two day beard. He's usually so clean cut and has always made an effort to shave, sometimes twice a day if the need requires, because of a compliment once paid to him by someone he's going to see today.

"You look so much sweeter with your face clean."

That was all it had taken for Blaine to commit to shaving so rigorously, and now he was going to have to face Sebastian with a beard. It bothered him more than it should have given the circumstances, and he found that the more he thought about it, the itchier it became.

In the absence of any fresh clothing, Blaine was forced to recloth in the garments he had been wearing for two days. He bided his time impatiently, eating breakfast as quickly as he could and watching the door like a dog waiting for its master.

Kurt came, as he did, when he pleased and with no urgency at all. He just looked at Blaine when Blaine got up to approach him, and Blaine worried that he had forgotten or changed his mind.

"We'll acquire you some new clothing on the way back."

It was relief, not because it meant he would have something new to wear, but because Kurt had remembered. It took him a minute to follow Kurt out into the hall outside his door, where only an elevator door existed because the memory of the pain of leaving the entryway was still fresh with him. This time though, nothing happened, and his first instinct was to run - an instinct he mentally shut down. He was not going to screw this up.

He followed Kurt, and in the elevator they were joined by two other men, dressed in impeccable suits that both nodded towards Kurt. These men knew Kurt, and that told Blaine not to bother pleading with them.

Kurt led the way through the lobby, Blaine followed, and the two men that had joined them tailed behind Blaine. It was a wordless, effective threat, and Blaine didn't even bother to think about calling out to anyone - not that there was anyone around on the way through the lobby, out the door, and into the waiting limo. Kurt was silence on the way, as were his guards, and Blaine was left to try and pinpoint where the apartment was located based on where they were driving from. It was definitely a rich neighbourhood, one that he wouldn't have been able to afford anytime soon, and as they drove the building became more dilapidated and the scenery was less impressive. This was an area Blaine knew. This was Brownsville, and it was definitely an area Sebastian always tried to avoid.

The limo pulled up in front of a brick building that looked abandoned, the windows boarded up and the walls covered in graffiti. Blaine shook his head. "This can't be right…."

No one responded to his comment though, and so he was left to follow his escorts out of the limo. A door was opened before they even got to it, and a short man whose gut protruded from the bottom of his sweat stained T-shirt gestured for them to come in, looking back and forth over the street they were on worriedly. It was a sham then, a building meant to look unoccupied, and Blaine's stomach made several sets of knots as he followed the other men in because in every gangster movie he had seen - abandoned warehouse type building were where people were killed.

However, the building wasn't short on occupants, and once they had descended down some questionable metal steps, Blaine found himself overlooking a massive sweat shop of some kind, where the people were sitting on the floor in numbers that couldn't be abiding by fire code, and hand stitching things together. For the most part they were women, and most also looked like they were of various asian descent, so Blaine assumed they were likely illegal immigrants caught up in some kind of scheme for citizenship. His attention to them was pulled away though the second he heard a familiar voice rise over the crowd to the far end of the basement.

"Faster! Come on! I'll have your lazy ass sent back to China or Taiwan or wherever the fuck you came from!"

Blaine's eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open as he stared at the back side of Sebastian, wearing a very un-Sebastian like outfit of khaki's and a non-brand name polo shirt. His friend was standing over a woman, who cringed in his presence, as he yelled at her.

This was all so very wrong in so many ways.

"Sebastian!" Blaine called out before his brain even registered that he had done so, and his friend turned and looked at Blaine in surprise, clearly not expecting him. On seeing Blaine though, Sebastian's whole demeanor changed, and Blaine could see the long time friend return in the way he confidently strode across the floor and in how the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smirk.

"Well, well Blainey boy. Didn't expect to see you here-"

"Are you alright?! Did they hurt you?!" Blaine spat out, closing the gap between them and looking closely to see if Sebastian was suffering from any after effects of a beating or something else that could explain why he would feel obliged to keep the sweatshop workers on track.

"Whoa.. hey…" Sebastian pulled away from Blaine's attempt to grab onto him and took a step back. "I'm fine. Just… settling some things."

Blaine had almost forgotten Kurt and his entourage, all of whom stayed behind him and hadn't moved to intercept him or stop him. Yet Kurt's words weaseled their way into Blaine's head and he couldn't help but reiterate them. "They said you got into debt. They said you-"

"Look!" Sebastian held up a hand, and Blaine snapped his teeth together. "I figured you'd be treated well enough by some rich sugar daddy - and you seem alright. Better than having to keep these clowns on track."

It wasn't anything Blaine expected him to say, and for a moment his mouth seemed incapable of responding as the words processed in his mind. When he did speak though, he wasn't sure if it was a question or a confirmation. "You… used me to settle a debt?"

"Look. If I didn't they were going to kill me. You understand right Blainey?"

But he didn't. As much as his mind circled around the idea he really, truly didn't. He thought he knew Sebastian, thought he knew everything about him. What Kurt had said was true though…

"Look. I just have to keep up quotas here for a couple years and then -"

"A couple years?!" Blaine spat, his emotions whirling around now as much as his mind was. "A COUPLE YEARS?! What about me? What about what I want?"

"Fuck, Blaine, come on... "

"YOU SOLD ME!"

"Your sale stopped me from being axed-"

"I DIDN'T EVEN BELONG TO YOU!"

"But you're my friend-"

"I DON'T BELONG TO YOU!"

Blaine's yelling was drawing the attention of all the workers, and whether they understood what he was saying or not, it didn't matter to him. He had spent the last few years of his life rejecting suitors, hanging on every word Sebastian had said, even going to Cuba along with Sebastian in the hopes Sebastian would see him as more than just a friend, and in the end it was that dumb loyalty that had gotten him in this mess and Sebastian didn't even look a little bit regretful.

What happened next was something Blaine had never, ever seen himself doing. In fact, he had once argued in a history class that he was a pacifist and had never seen the purpose of violence, yet in that moment he had no other way to verbalize the emotion and stress and utter rage he felt than to tackle Sebastian to the ground, hands at his neck and screaming.

"I don't belong to you! I never belonged to you! I trusted you! Why! Why? WHY?!"

Of course Sebastian couldn't respond, having been completely unprepared to be tackled and choked and now gurgling in response. Hands went to Blaine's shoulders, and pulled him back. He let them, his logical self telling him to accept their guidance before he did something he regretted, but never stopped seething and glaring Sebastian's way.

"You didn't even tell me about the debt! Why the hell do you even have a debt?! You're made out of money! What the hell kind of friend do you think you are?!"

Sebastian shrunk back, rubbing a hand over his neck and squeaking out his voice. "Parents… cut me off…. I… borrowed…"

"From the mob?! You're a moron!"

"Yeah…" It seemed like Sebastian wanted to add more onto that, but his voice cracked and croaked as a result of the bruising Blaine had inflicted upon it, so he just stumbled backwards once he stood up and gave himself a few meters of space lest Blaine wanted to do anything else to wound him.

"Let's go now." Kurt's voice spoke up from behind Blaine, and with nothing more he could say to Sebastian, expect for things he had always been taught not to say, Blaine silently agreed by turning his back on Sebastian and following Kurt up the stairs. Kurt, who throughout the whole meeting hadn't said a word. He had been right, and now Blaine felt like more than a fool than he ever had.

He didn't even try to look for help, or run, or plead. Blaine just got back into the limo and glared at the carpet on the much too opulent vehicle to force his tears back into his eye sockets. Anger became regret after several streets, and regret became sadness after several more.

"I thought he was your boyfriend." Kurt finally spoke up from across the limo seats where he was sipping something yellow.

"No... " Blaine managed to utter quietly.

"But you wanted him to be."

Blaine didn't answer that, since he knew full well that it wasn't a question but Kurt just confirming what he had seen between them.

"Do you love him?"

That was a question, and one that, a week ago, Blaine would have wholeheartedly answered yes to. But now…

"Probably…"

"If he had asked you to sell yourself to help his debt would you have?"

Blaine's head shot up at that, looking across to Kurt who bled with indifference the way he blankly looked back at Blaine. "Of course not."

"According to the manager, he'll only be there two years if he can keep up productivity."

"And me?"

"Undetermined."

Blaine sighed, and for the first time since he had wound up with this man, he didn't even care. His heart felt like it had been siphoned of blood, now sitting heavy and dead inside of him, and his stomach felt too tied up to make room for food. The only reason he knew he was alive was because of how hollow his lungs felt even though the air still pumped in and out of them as he breathed automatically.

"I shouldn't have hurt him."

"Honestly? That's your biggest concern?"

Blaine nodded. "He's made some mistakes and -"

"He's an idiot. You can't really be standing up for him right now."

"He's all I have left in the world…."

Kurt held his glass out to one of the guards who took it wordlessly, and then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, "No. He's not."

Blaine rolled his eyes and looked away from the blue eyes pointed at him and out the window. Kurt might presume he meant something to Blaine, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Kurt didn't try and console Blaine any further, and Blaine followed him out to a fancy clothing store where they had two individuals bring clothes that Blaine tried on for Kurt who either gave his approval or disapproval. He felt like a doll, but didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore, or, at least that's what it felt like. He had no smiles to give, no hope to dream on, and no one left for him.

When they left, the guards carried a ridiculous number of bags to the car behind himself and Kurt, and Blaine had to wonder just how much Kurt had spent on him before washing away that thought with the memory of seeing his name attached to a two hundred thousand price tag. Clothing costs had to be peanuts to this man.

The drive to the apartment was silent aside from a call Kurt took that was largely ambiguous with "Yes"'s and "No"'s and "We'll see"'s. The guards left them alone again on the elevator, stepping off on the floor just under Kurt's. Blaine could have fought the man then. Taken him down somehow, but he didn't have the energy for it, and couldn't see himself hurting someone else since he had already done that to his only friend in that day.

They carried the bags into the apartment, and, as directed, Blaine took them upstairs and hung up all his new clothing in the walk-in closet that Kurt had, at some point, cleared enough space out of so that Blaine would have room. It made Blaine wonder if this was what arranged marriages were like - where one individual might move to a new place without anyone they knew to have to coexist with another because of some agreement the parents had made.

"I ordered Thai. I hope that's alright." Kurt noted upon Blaine's return to the living area, and Blaine, in his numbed state, just nodded. Kurt could have ordered fried monkey brains for all Blaine cared, his stomach didn't want to eat.

"Was it worth it?"

Blaine snapped out of his haze and looked at Kurt curiously. "What?"

"Was seeing him worth all the fuss you made?"

Had it? Blaine thought about how he would have fought and argued and made demands had Kurt not let him see the truth for himself, and then contrasted that to the scene he had made that day.

"I don't know."

* * *

_**One more before I hit the road! XOXO**_


	8. Chapter 8

If Kurt had know that taking Blaine to see Sebastian would have made him so compliant, he would have done it earlier. The week following Blaine's visit had seen him pull away from demanding to know when and if he'd be free, fighting Kurt on every turn, and trying to escape.

Still, it also had taken all the life out of Blaine. He barely spoke, barely ate, and when Kurt checked the cameras set up in the house while he was out, all he saw was Blaine either sleeping or looking out the window. It struck Kurt that he didn't precisely know how Pets must have spent their time during the day. Kurt had already reassigned the maid to take care of his office instead of his home since Blaine had begun taking care of any messes that arose, and had also begun to take care of the meals as well without any prompting, but aside from those two things Blaine didn't seem to do anything else.

It also wasn't for lack of Kurt trying either. He had ordered in a variety of top sellers in books, made sure the televisions all had the biggest satellite package available, and, in looking at the courses Blaine had taken at NYADA, had brought in several instruments that he knew Blaine could play. It all sat untouched though, and he had been irked when he had shown it all to Blaine only to receive a blank stare in response. What more could he possibly hope for?

So, when one of his assistants reminded him that a new play was about to open, Kurt made sure he had tickets. For years now he had been buying up tickets on and off Broadway, supporting it indirectly as he use the tickets to give as gifts to his clients, suggesting they take their wives. Occasionally he would go to shows as well, though he entrusted his guards to make sure no one else knew that. It was one thing to take a wife to a show to try and get into her pants and win over her good graces, it was another to go alone just because you enjoyed the arts.

On Saturday, after eating the omelette Blaine had prepared and watching Blaine pick at his own, Kurt announced his intentions.

"We're going out tonight. Wear the navy suit I bought you."

He expected Blaine to argue, to demand to know more, but all Kurt got instead was a quiet mumble of "Okay."

Inside of himself he sighed, and grew frustrated with the lacking response. It wasn't that he wanted Blaine to argue or fight him on it, nor did he expect Blaine to be excited given the lukewarm behaviour he had been witnessing all week, but he expected… something.

He wasn't even sure what.

Kurt figured he had also been more than kind. He hadn't gone and raped Blaine like so many pet owners did to their pets upon getting them. He had left whatever virtues Blaine had intact out of respect for him. It didn't mean it was easy for him though. Forced to be in Blaine's quiet company so much had stirred up old fantasies and, a couple times that past week, Kurt had procured the services of local escorts - ensuring they both had dark curly hair and small frames that made it easy for him to imagine that he had Blaine between his legs bobbing up and down and not some street whore. It took the edge off of being someone he so desperately wanted but had mentally put up on some unattainable pedestal. Blaine represented so much of what he wanted, both personally and romantically, or at least Kurt thought he did, and yet Kurt wasn't the Kurt that would have been compatible with the man he was coexisting with in his home. He had grown out of that Kurt and into something new and despicable that wasn't parallel to what Blaine was.

Even though Kurt had nothing to do that day, he still slipped out under the guise of having meetings and appointments to keep to. Being in the apartment with Blaine was like a constant awkward silence, and given that he had reacted in such a lackluster way to Kurt's announcement made it especially difficult to fathom being around him all day. So Kurt spent the day shopping, playing cards at one of the casino's he was invested in, and having his chauffeur drive him randomly through the city while he read in the back of the car. For the first time in a long time he was pursuing a book on something other than finances, psychology in fact. He needed to figure out how to manage Blaine and while the book was interesting, it wasn't exactly what he thought it would be. Unfortunately he had seen no books in the store titled along the lines of _How to Make Your Human Pet Happy_.

He returned to the apartment at seven, smelling the food before he saw it in the kitchen. Blaine had made supper, and a plate had been covered for him upon his return. It was a sweet gesture, one that certainly wasn't lost on Kurt as to its significance. No matter how this transition in Blaine's life was affecting him, he still seemed to care about those around him, even if that person was keeping him captive.

Kurt ate the food cold, and his stomach made a satisfied gurgle as it worked on digesting it, before he went upstairs where he found Blaine napping on the bed, in his suit, and looking every bit as adorable as he had so many years ago in his Dalton blazer. Kurt wished he could just wrap his arms around him, snuggle the boy awake, and have Blaine smile at him like he once had, but this wasn't then, and the dynamics of their relation weren't such that Kurt wasn't sure he wouldn't get kicked for trying to give Blaine affection. Instead, he set down the bouquet of roses he had bought on the bedside table and gently called for Blaine to wake up.

Ever since he had brought Blaine to his bed, Kurt had taken pleasure in watching him sleep - particularly in the early mornings when he was up to get ready for work and Blaine was still sleeping soundly. In those moments, Blaine looked unfettered and peaceful, like the boy he had once met - so beautiful and sweet.

"Mmm… sorry…." Blaine muttered as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and rubbed his eyes, "I only meant to lay down for a minute…."

Kurt allowed himself a small smirk as he looked at where Blaine's jacket was creased. Not badly enough to be an issue, but enough for Kurt to know that Blaine had been laying down for much longer than a minute. "It's alright. Thanks for dinner… I thought we'd grab a dessert on our way out."

Blaine's eyes had spotted the flowers set near him, and, ever so tentatively, he reached out to touch the petals of the closest rose as if he wasn't really sure they were there. "Are these…?"

"For you." Kurt said, firming up his voice as he then gestured to the door, "We'll put them in water on the way out."

Blaine nodded, picking up the bouquet and looking down at them curiously. Had he ever been bought some Kurt wondered as they stepped down the stairs and he watched Blaine find a large glass which he filled with water before setting the flowers in and arranging them so none of them put too much weight on the others. It was the first time Kurt had bought anyone flowers, and while he balked a little at how overpriced they were, especially since they were just plants, he had spared no expense.

He didn't receive thanks though, just a nod that Blaine was ready to continue as the flowers were set on the counter closest to the window, and Kurt led the way out of the apartment and into the elevator where the silent treatment continued. They were flanked by one of Kurt's guards in the lobby, who joined them in the limousine for a similarly quiet ride.

It was his guard whom Kurt sent to fetch cheesecake from one of the smaller shops in Manhattan that was renowned for its classic recipe, and while the guard left, Kurt attempted conversation.

"I'm sure you've seen lots of plays during your time at NYADA."

"Yeah." was the simple reply. No elaboration on what he had seen and when, and not even a show of excitement at how Kurt had hinted at their intended destination. Kurt would think a student of NYADA would gush over getting to go to a production.

They ate their cheesecake in silence, and despite the loud stomach growling coming from Blaine's seat, the boy only picked at his cheesecake like he picked at everything. Kurt reminded himself not to be bothered by it. Perhaps Blaine was just reducing his caloric intake since he was so inactive at home and didn't want to gain weight.

Still though, Blaine showed no more enthusiasm when the limo pulled up to the one of the more prestigious theaters, and less still when he was escorted alongside Kurt to the private box seats Kurt had reserved.

Kurt had been sure to pick a musical, and something light hearted for Blaine's benefit, and even though he himself loved theater, Kurt instead spent most of the evening watching Blaine. At first Blaine continued to appear indifferent, but, as the songs began and the drama unfolded onstage, his mask came off. He leaned forward, watching the actors and mouthing along with some of the songs, and though the play had a happy ending, Blaine teared up as the actors appeared for their curtain calls and clapped enthusiastically for each and every one of them.

Kurt waited until Blaine had collected himself before leading him down the back hallway, and introducing him to the actors. It was partially a test, to see if Blaine would try to run, but also done out of the knowledge that it might be special to Blaine. Blaine didn't disappoint him either, gushing over the well known Broadway stars and getting autographed headshots from each of them after telling them all how much he hoped to be doing what they were one day.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Blaine to this after all. It had reminded him of what he wouldn't be able to do.

Still, Kurt reveled in the grinning and laughter that Blaine gave off whenever he spoke to one of the performers, and how he beamed at each of the pictures presented to him. Maybe something could be salvaged from the evening, maybe Kurt could make him happy.

The ride home was quiet, and Kurt let himself stare at Blaine as he looked over the faces of the actor, and reread the program he had taken with him. When they got back to the apartment, and the guard left them at the elevator, Kurt caught Blaine peeking towards him and looking away. He saw how Blaine nervously rubbed over his own fingers, and how he pulled his lower lip into his mouth to nibble over it. Blaine had something to say.

"Out with it then." Kurt finally huffed as they walked back into the suite and the door closed up behind them automatically.

"I want to go back to NYADA in the fall."

Kurt took in a breath, reaching for his pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. He had managed to go the whole evening without them, but now he felt like he was on the cusp of an uncomfortable conversation and knew he would need something to take the edge off. "No."

"There has to be a way I can pay you back by then."

"There isn't."

"What if you had me taken and brought back there every day? You're gone during the day anyhow… you don't need me here."

"I can't trust you like that."

"Please… please…. I need it… I need to be on stage…"

"You know how many people come to this city to go on stage and how many don't make it?" Kurt grunted, flicking his lighter and inwardly cursing at it when it took a few strikes for it to fire up. "You've got a better chance of winning the lottery."

"But I need to try."

"You're lucky to have a roof over your head and to be getting taken care of."

"But it's not what I want!" Blaine spat out, walking around in front of Kurt so Kurt was faced to look at him. "I would rather be living out of a box and struggling to make ends meet if it meant I could follow my dreams!"

"You're naive then. Talk to a homeless person and see how much they enjoy it." Kurt grumbled. This was not how he had hoped the night would end.

"Maybe I am naive… but… please."

"No."

"Sleep with me."

The cigarette that had been balanced on Kurt's lower lip fell to the group as his mouth fell open and he looked at Blaine wide eyed. Thankfully he hadn't been able to light it just yet, so there was no holes being burnt into the carpet, but there was a hole being burnt into Kurt's head from Blaine's words, as if he had something missing through the center of it. The conversation had taken a very odd turn and Kurt felt like he had missed something.

"A prostitute makes what…? I can… you can… I can pay you back that way can't I?"

Blaine's voice wavered as he spoke, and his eyes darted away with his uncomfortableness. "Just… have sex with me… as much as you want. I'll do anything to be free. Please."

"You told me last week you wouldn't do that." Kurt grunted out, kneeling down to pick up his dropped cigarette. "... and quite frankly I'm not interested in screwing someone who doesn't really want it. I'm not exactly into rape fantasy."

"It won't be that. Please. I'll do anything."

Kurt couldn't exactly be accused of thinking clearly then. The image of Blaine below him, on him, against him, was one that had permeated his fantasies now for years, and to finally make it a reality had been a dream until this point. Logically, he knew it was a stupid agreement, and since he had all the power in their relationship, it wasn't something he should have even considered. Voice of colleagues inside of him suggested agreeing and then recanting, while others chastised him for even stopping to think when it came to someone offering their body up.

But Kurt did delay answering, trying to juggle his desire and the want to keep Blaine forever if he could. Agreeing meant that at some point he'd have to give Blaine up, disagreeing meant that… well, it meant that the tightness that had immediately taken over his pants would have to be taken care of on his own.

Ultimately though, it wasn't his logic or his desire that made the choice. It was the memory of a young boy watching a performance of Teenage Dream and his heart fluttering with hope that let him decide. It was that boy in him, that silly kid that had wanted nothing more than a place to fit in and to be accepted. That boy, that saw in Blaine a place to be safe.

"Okay."


	9. Chapter 9

Kurt could have seemed more excited about the prospect of having his way with Blaine. It wasn't like Blaine hadn't realised that having sex with him was the whole point of Kurt owning him. It certainly wasn't because he was a mediocre cook or because he was pleasant company. Regardless, Blaine stopped himself from saying anything volatile and instead led the way up the stairs and to the bedroom, where, without looking back at Kurt, he carefully took off and put away his clothing before his sense of decency could kick in. Blaine could hear Kurt doing the same, but kept his eyes focused and away. He knew Kurt's clothing would just end up on the floor, as they always seemed to, left in wrinkled piles for someone else to attend to. Blaine wouldn't allow himself that freedom. He had to keep whatever bits of himself, however mundane, in tact that he could. Kurt could have his body, show him that Sebastian was a dick, and take away his freedom, but he wouldn't take away whatever else made Blaine… Blaine.

Which, Blaine reminded himself as he took in a deep breath and pushed down his briefs in one motion, was why he was doing this. If there was anything Blaine had fought for over the years, it was that he was going to be on stage. He wouldn't and couldn't let it go. The means would justify the end. They had to.

He crawled up on the bed once he was completely naked, offering his backside up to Kurt as he kept a solid focus on the headboard. He didn't want to see what was about to happen, didn't want to think about it. Hell, maybe he could get through this by thinking about other things entirely.

"You're shaking."

Blaine tensed up at Kurt's voice from behind him and looked down at where he was grabbing the sheets in his hands, white knuckled, and, indeed, trembling.

"I'm fine. Just do it."

"No."

Instead of the pressure Blaine at his backside that Blaine was bracing himself for, the only weight he felt was a shift in the bed as Kurt slid under the blankets on his side and reached for a cigarette from the drawer beside him.

Blaine had to make this work.

In desperation, he made himself look Kurt's way, and crawled himself over to whip the blanket off Kurt, exposing his nude body, including that part that Blaine had been expecting to be within him by that point.

"Hey!" Kurt snapped, reaching to pull the blankets back just as Blaine was dropping his head down. They met in chaos, the blanket being pressed against Blaine's cheek just as he had gotten his lips around the salty head of Kurt's cock. The instant he heard Kurt groan and felt the blanket pressed against his face loosen, Blaine shut his eyes and began moving his head up and down just like he had seen men do in pornographic films.

For a minute, it worked, and as Blaine did his damndest to get Kurt to come so it would be over, moving his tongue every which way, bobbing his head frantically up and down, and holding on tightly with his lips, he was rewarded with moans and cat-like mewls from Kurt - whose body had gone lax below Blaine. However, whatever bits of decency Kurt might have possessed seemed to catch up with him and Blaine found his head being pulled off as Kurt's fingers dug into Blaine's hair, painfully taking it away from Kurt's body and bringing the blanket back up to cover himself.

"I said no."

"But -"

"Don't you see all those damned ads they run everywhere? No means no damn it."

"But -"

"Just go to sleep Blaine."

Kurt rolled away from him then, his back to the side of the bed that had become Blaine's, leaving Blaine there, naked and exposed and confused, the taste of Kurt still on his lips and tongue and salty tears burning the corners of his eyes.

His only shot at earning his way out and he had ruined it with his damned nerves. On one hand he guessed he should have been glad Kurt wasn't the kind of guy who ignored the feelings of the guy he was sleeping with in favour of his own needs, on the other hand, Blaine needed this. He needed to do something to get out of this hell. He was a theater student and he he couldn't even act like he wanted it.

"Kurt… come on…"

Kurt grumbled something incomprehensible and turned his head to look back at Blaine. "Do you really think I'm that kind of scum bag? Fuck off. Go to sleep."

"I need to go back to school. I need -"

There was a sudden movement in the bed that Blaine wasn't expecting, and before he could take a breath he found himself knocked flat on his back with Kurt overtop of him, looking down at him with barely blue eyes - so immersed in black. "Is this what you want?!"

Blaine took in a sharp, stilted breath and closed his eyes tightly. It wasn't what he wanted, but it was what he needed to do.

However, Kurt wasn't making a move in that direction, and he seemed intent on making some kind of point as he grabbed Blaine's hand and held it up, "You can't stop shaking, you can't look at me, and you're as pale as a fucking ghost. You think that turns me on?!"

Blaine's arm was dropped back to the bed and again Kurt abandoned him, leaving him there to shudder as the other man grabbed his cigarettes, tossed on a bathrobe and walked out of the room in a huff. Left alone, Blaine curled up on himself and cried quietly. He had ruined his chance. All he had to do was act… so that he could go to school to learn how to act. The irony wasn't lost on him, but it didn't humor him either.

The whole week Blaine had been mourning. Mourning more than the loss of his freedom, he was mourning the time he had wasted pining after Sebastian and ignoring all his faults that now seemed glaringly obvious in retrospect. Sebastian had never cared about him the way he had cared about Sebastian, and because of Sebastian, he was now in this mess. More than that, he had gone against his parents wishes to go to a prestigious business university as they had, and had cut them off when he left for New York. They wouldn't even know he was missing - and would they even care after the hateful words that had passed between them?

The only thing he had left was NYADA and the promise of a career on the stage, and now it was all left in the hands of a man who didn't seem to know what to do with him. Was Blaine so unattractive that Kurt didn't want him enough to hurt him?

Those were the thoughts that Blaine fell asleep to, and when he awoke in the morning, a blanket had been pulled over him and Kurt was nestled back on his side of the bed with that horrid snore of his. It was the first time Blaine was awake before Kurt, and as Blaine sat up, he saw an envelope on his bedside table with the NYADA logo stamped on it.

He glanced back at Kurt curiously, who still slept, and then reached to take the paper in hand, pulling out a number of papers from the envelope that were printed on NYADA stationary. How Kurt had done this, in the middle of the night, was a mystery, but one that prompted Blaine's hands to shake again.

It was a confirmation of registration for him for the fall semester and a confirmation that tuition had been paid in full.

Blaine didn't know exactly what it meant. Did it mean he was free? Did it mean he would be allowed to attend classes? Whatever the case was, Blaine found himself holding the papers tightly to his chest and crying again - though this time in happiness.

He got up, showered, dressed, and went to make breakfast. Not just the simple breakfasts he had been making, but a full meal with every breakfast item he could think of - pancakes, bacon, sausage, omelets, muffins, and even orange juice he squeezed himself. By the time Kurt woke up and had trudged down the stairs, the table was full and Blaine was due for another shower with all the food he had gotten on himself in the process of making it.

"What's all this?" Kurt mumbled, still half asleep as he slid into his seat and looked over the covered table.

"Breakfast." Blaine answered simply, pouring Kurt a fresh cup of coffee to go along with the orange juice already at his place setting. "Thank you."

"... pretty sure you're the one who made this."

"No. I mean for NYADA."

"Oh… well.. we'll talk about the conditions for that." Kurt grunted, picking up a piece of bacon with his fingers and munching on it. So the letters didn't mean his complete freedom after all, but it did mean that Kurt seemed willing to bend a little, and, after the past couple weeks, a little meant a lot to Blaine.

Kurt aggressively went after his breakfast, as he seemed to do with every meal Blaine prepared. Given what Blaine had seen of his naked body the night before, he presumed that Kurt must work out during his time away from home - because with the way he ate, not exercising would have ensured Kurt would have had a gut instead of the impressive abs he had instead.

Blaine ate well too, for the first time since he had gotten to this place. He didn't worry about what it meant that Kurt had paid his tuition, assuming that it was just more money he'd have to figure out how to pay back, nor did he concern himself over how Kurt was going to keep tabs on him when he was out - as he was sure to do. He just ate, and allowed himself to smile, thinking about how he'd soon be back on track.

"Also… thank you for not… you know."

Kurt peered up and over at Blaine, a forkful of sausage in front of him he was about to consume. For a moment, Blaine let himself be looked at in that odd, curious way that Kurt studied things, and then he finally got a response.

"I'm not a total monster you know."

Blaine knew… or at least he was starting to.


	10. Chapter 10

Blaine had to remind himself that he wasn't okay with being owned.

Sure, he was fine with not having to worry about tuition, alright with living in a luxury apartment stocked with the high quality, fresh from the market foods. He definitely didn't mind the sound system that was built into the walls in all the rooms from which he could play music off the TV which had more channels than he knew existed, including music from all around the world. Blaine, in fact, liked not having to sleep on a NYADA dorm mattress - which were more closely related to bricks than the foam they were advertised as. It was nice not to have to share bathrooms and showers with a whole floor of residents either, and not have to pray to the shower gods that there would be at least a minutes worth of hot water left.

The clothing he wore each day was brand name, like the stuff he had growing up. No longer did he have to feel ashamed about the knock-off labels when he would be around his more well-to-do peers. In fact, the clothing he had on his side of the closet was more up to date than anything they wore anyhow.

The guitar he had been gifted with was also a real MacPherson Camrielle - something he had only ever seen behind glass and a heart stopping price tag in the music shops he frequented. Whether Kurt purchased it because he actually knew about the quality of the instrument, or because he just picked the highest price in the store and went with it was a question Blaine didn't ask, but he felt like he was carrying pure gold each time he picked it up.

In fact, in the days that followed his feeble attempt to try and earn his freedom, Blaine had to wonder what the point would be in being free. He had managed to convince Kurt to let him go back to school (though he had to return each day promptly after classes), had been given priority in class selection, and got to live as the affluent did - all for basically nothing but keeping the apartment clean and dinners cooked - and Kurt didn't even ask for that.

A niggling in the back of his mind insisted it was Stockholm Syndrome. He had, as he recalled reading in his psychology textbooks back in high school, associated positively with his captor. Regardless of whatever evils Kurt committed from his office, in the apartment he ensured Blaine had everything he asked for and wanted, and never put a move on him sexually or physically. Hell, even Sebastian had made unkind comments at Blaine's expense in the company of their friends, but Kurt, though he didn't say much, never had.

In fact, all it had taken was Blaine complaining about how the cigarette smell that floated around Kurt like a cloud gave him headaches for Kurt to dump his ashtrays and silently commit to smoking out on the balcony or out of the apartment. Maybe it was the way the air cleared without the toxic nicotine stench marring it, but Blaine felt more light on his feet each day, and had more energy.

But… he still had to remind himself that he was a hostage, and surely a hostage could never be happy.

""Why don't you ever talk about your family?" Blaine asked one evening over dinner, trying, as regularly seemed to be the case, to get Kurt involved in a conversation.

"Nothing to say."

"There's no pictures of them around…" Blaine noted, trying to keep the words flowing.

"I have pictures in my head."

"Do they ever visit?"

"No."

"Do you talk to them?"

"No."

"Do you have any family Kurt?"

Kurt sighed and set down his fork, peering over at Blaine with those crystal blue eyes that seemed like something out of a dream or memory Blaine had once had. They felt familiar, and yet didn't, accented by little wrinkles at the corners and dark circles below them. "I do, but no one close enough to really bother with. Is there something you want to know?"

Blaine frowned and shook his head, looking back to his meal and quietly scooping bites back into his mouth. One of the major pitfalls of being alone in the apartment all day long, day after day, was the lack of social interaction - and Kurt was hard to engage. Blaine was so used to people all the time, everywhere, that even having to share a bed with Kurt was almost a relief because it reminded him of the close proximity of living with other guys in the small dorms.

Otherwise sleeping with Kurt was exceedingly weird.

For starters, the snoring would periodically wake Blaine, making it so he never got a straight eight hours of rest like he had trained himself to do for years. Then there was the fact that Kurt was a total blanket hog and liked to keep the temperature in the apartment cool at night for some reason, leaving Blaine to freeze until he wore layers to bed - which he was. There was also the issue of Kurt drifting towards his side of the bed as he slept, to the point that Blaine could feel Kurt's breath on him when he had those abrupt waking moments, and it wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that Kurt's breath reeked of cigarettes and alcohol most of the time.

On top of all that, Blaine always felt Kurt's eyes on him when he wasn't looking at Kurt, either before bed or on the rare morning when he actually woke up while Kurt was getting ready. For a guy that so eagerly pushed Blaine off of him when Blaine was trying to show how desperate he was, Kurt sure had no problem ogling Blaine all the time.

Or maybe it was just Blaine's imagination running away with him. Aside from being stared at, Blaine really had no proof that Kurt was even gay. Or maybe he was just a closeted gay guy, which would fit with the whole mobster profile. Maybe he wanted Blaine, but couldn't act on it. Or maybe, Blaine was just that unattractive.

It wasn't a new feeling for Blaine, to consider himself unattractive. Sure, there always seemed to be girls interested, but never guys. He had thrown himself at one older guy who worked at a Gap store when he was in high school and was angrily rebuffed, and then there was Sebastian whom Blaine had spent way too many years pining over with no results. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he was unattractive, or too needy, or just… something.

Whatever the case was, he was glad that Kurt had the sense to stop him, because in that moment when he was face down on Kurt's crotch Blaine was on the verge of tears at what he was doing, how low he had gone (both literally and figuratively), and how much he wanted to be on stage after seeing the play. The actors, the stage, the music - it made his heart stutter in his chest to think about it. He got goosebumps, prompted by the chills the ran down his neck and out to each arm. When the audience stood and clapped, Blaine was the first one on his feet, and for a second he felt like it they were clapping for him. The accepted him. They liked him. They wanted more of him.

Of course the moment passed, but Blaine remembered it vividly, and now more than ever he wanted to act and sing and have the world worship him.

But he was stuck in an apartment with the only audience available to him being Kurt, who barely seemed to give Blaine any notice except to stare at him uncomfortably.

It became more wearing as time went on.

Kurt would be gone most of the day, and often sometimes at night, but the final straw for Blaine was when Kurt left a note for him one morning saying he'd be gone on a business trip for the whole weekend.

Blaine lasted until the first night until he got so maddenly lonely that he went into the bar, grabbed something that looked toxic, and drenched his liver in it until his head was numb and tingly and his body felt warm all over.

After that he didn't remember much, but thankfully woke up in the bed - though with a killer headache and only one sock on.

The second night he originally thought he'd behave himself, but again he found himself in the bar, hugging a bottle to his chest, sitting and singing out show tunes in every key but the right one.

That's when things started getting really hazy in his mind, as the lines between what he should do and what he could do blurred.

"Hey! Kurt!" He yelled up at the ceiling, bottle in hand splashing out and over the rim and onto his hand. "Why tha' 'ell you keep leavin' me 'ere all 'lone?! Ain't I good 'nough for you?!"

This was followed by an obscene amount of giggling and hiccups before his constantly spinning wheel of emotions stopped on angry again.

"Wha' you want?" A hiccup. "A show?" Another hiccup. "I'll give ye' one!"

Blaine was vaguely aware of the fact that he was stripping down, complete with little breathy sing-song hums to accompany his rotating hips, and at one point he registered that he was standing up on the couch in nothing but his underwear and a new bottle in hand - but didn't recall climbing up on the couch or getting a new drink. What he did remember was crashing backwards over the couch and landing on his back, and no matter how much alcohol he had drank, it didn't seem to help the pain.

Yet he wasn't so easily brought down, and once he had finished sipping the bottle dry from his position on the floor, he crawled to the bar to collect a new bottle of something. Anything would do at that point. If there was one thing Blaine knew about himself it was that the more he drank, the less the actual type of drink matter. He was just constantly thirsty.

It was when Blaine was snuggled against the mini fridge in the bar that he heard the door open, but with the way everything seemed to be processing in a delayed manner, he only heard the door and the footsteps after his eyes had spotted Kurt walking to him, shaking his head as he did in that disapproving way and crouching down to meet Blaine's eyes.

"You're a mess."

It didn't look like Kurt was yelling, but to Blaine's ears it sure felt like it and he cringed with the words before tossing an accusatory finger in Kurt's face. "'n you're there!"

It sounded like it made sense in Blaine's mind, but the way the corner of Kurt's mouth crept up into a smile and another shake of his head was given, he realized it probably didn't make sense, and, before he knew what was happening, the bottle had been pulled out of Blaine's hands and Kurt was picking him up.

It made Blaine dizzy, and all he could think of to do in response was wrap his arms around Kurt's neck and whimper in the hopes Kurt would understand his pain.

"Christ… how much have you had to drink…."

It was less a question and more a statement as Kurt looked over the empty bottles in the living room before carrying Blaine up the stairs and to the bedroom. The journey made Blaine's stomach bounce though, and again he whined and buried his nose in Kurt's neck.

"Why don'cho like me?"

"Oh good grief…" Kurt huffed, carefully setting Blaine down on the bed, which he crawled down the center of and hugged the pillow he usually rested his head on. "... what the hell are you talking about?"

"You bought me…. but you don't even want me… and I'm so alone all the time…."

Blaine heard a sigh, and shut his eyes to block out the light over the bed that seemed to be digging holes right through his eyes and into his brain. "It's not my policy to have serious discussions with drunks."

"But you won't even talk to me when I'm sober…"

"It's been a long time since I've had to talk about anything outside of business Blaine…"

"But you're all I have!"

The room went quiet then, and Blaine heard the light switch snap and the light behind his eyelids faded. He let them open again to adjust and watch as Kurt peeled his clothing off until he was only his his underwear as well before crawling into the small space Blaine was affording him by dominating the center of the bed and looking directly at him with those bright blue eyes.

"I'll try more."

"Why'd you even buy me….?"

Another sigh, and Blaine, drunk as he was, didn't miss the pained expression Kurt made before turning away from him.

"I'm trying to figure that out still."


	11. Chapter 11

Kurt's guilt ate at him that night, so much so that he couldn't sleep even when Blaine rolled against his back and began snuffling soundly. That boy would have a fierce hangover tomorrow, and it would all be Kurt's fault. What's more is that Kurt had promised to try and be around more, but with the deal he was working on brokering, the same deal he had been gone the whole weekend for, he didn't know if he could make that promise a reality.

He had two feuding families who, in a credit to their organizations, were trying to invest together to try and cease the back and forth hostilities they had been engaging in for years that was leaving them short on manpower and money. If they had come to him with open arms and heads full of common sense the deal would have been finalized by now, but because of their hesitations, endless questions, and random worries about the other side, Kurt had been spending a lot of time mediating arguments, explaining and re-explaining how the investment would work, and otherwise entertaining the two sides together to try and make them more amicable towards one another. It was a big deal, and while Kurt lived on big deals, it was also one that had great political value to him. It would position him as the finance manager of finance managers for the criminal minded. Anybody who was anybody would seek him out to do their business.

Truth be told though, he wasn't sure exactly why he was going after the deal so fiercely. He had lots of money, and the power really didn't impress him because there wasn't much he could do with it more than he didn't already do. If he was more trusting he supposed he could extend the business, hire some lackeys, and have more time to himself - but to do what? He had given up his interests so long ago they were foreign to him.

… and he was so damned scared of investing more time and energy into Blaine, regardless of the promise he had made.

Kurt was downright terrified of caring for anyone anymore, and he knew it. He had lost his mom, then his dad, then all the friends he had and the life built up in Ohio. He was all too aware of how quickly things could come tumbling down and the safest thing he could do to protect his heart was not to put it out there. Then of course, there was the fact that the only reason he had Blaine snuggling in against him at all was because he had illegally purchased him. Kurt knew the instant that Blaine was offered freedom, he would run for it.

But he had still promised.

With a sigh Kurt tried to shift a little, uncomfortably wedged on the edge of the bed with Blaine drooling now against his back. It might have been nice if Blaine was doing this sober, but stinking of alcohol and body odor, as well as being so damned clingy made Kurt feel claustrophobic in his position. He had had his driver rush home when he decided to check in on his home camera feeds on his phone and saw Blaine stripping and singing into his bottle on top of the couch. It wasn't fast enough to stop Blaine from falling over, but hopefully he had saved Blaine from alcohol poisoning.

Kurt reminded himself to lock up the alcohol tomorrow.

Sleep did come finally, and it was the sounds of groaning interspersed with the undeniable sounds of upchucking into the toilet that Kurt awoke in the morning. He rolled his eyes, sat up, and grabbed the aspirin from his bedside drawer, stepping into the bathroom where Blaine was hunched over the porcelain and hugging it tightly.

"Can I get you anything?"

The response Kurt got was a gurgle, a glare of reddened eyes, and a look of surprise as nausea took Blaine over once more and made him turn his head to empty the next batch of stomach contents into toilet.

"Okay. I guess I'll make my own breakfast then."

"Fizzy pop…."

Kurt stopped, holding one foot up ready to leave as Blaine spoke, and turned his head Blaine's way. "Fizzy pop?"

"Helps my stomach…."

Kurt nodded, going down the stairs and to the kitchen to check for anything carbonated before realizing he had ordered nothing of the sort for groceries. Shoes were slid on, and before Kurt realized it, he was paying for a bottle of soda down the street at a convenience store and rushing back into the apartment to pour Blaine a glass of it.

Blaine hadn't moved, and when Kurt went back into the bathroom, he had to help tip the glass to Blaine's lips to help him drink it.

"Thanks…" Blaine murmured after he had drank the whole glass. "My mom used to get me pop whenever my stomach hurt… it helped…"

"Aspirin on the counter here for you…" Kurt said quietly, thinking back to how his own mother had always rubbed his belly when he had a sour stomach. "... otherwise you should probably just sleep it off."

"Mmmhmm…"

Kurt gave Blaine his space for the rest of the day. He ate a bowl of cereal for the first time in a long time, cleaned up the mess Blaine had left in the living room, and when he went back upstairs, with Blaine having tucked himself back in bed, Kurt cleaned the bathroom to bring down the smell of vomit.

Then he watched Blaine sleep for an embarrassingly long time, mapping out his face and comparing it to the one in his memory. He hadn't known Blaine had such thick curls when he met him, but it now made sense that he would have gelled them down given how unruly they were. He also seemed smaller, but Kurt presumed that was just because Kurt had grown much more than Blaine had. If it hadn't been for his cell phone buzzing in his pocket to interrupt him, he might have never stopped staring.

"Yeah… yeah…. no…" Kurt muttered to the voice on the other end, his assistant, and sneaking more peaks at Blaine, who had blinked his eyes open to the sound of Kurt's voice, "You know what? I need a day. Cancel it….. Yes I'm serious…. Do it."

With that he turned off his phone, tucked it back into his pocket and looked Blaine's way once again, "Feel better?"

"I feel like shit." Blaine groaned, holding up a hand to block the sun coming in from the window. "... but I don't have to puke anymore…"

"Are you hungry?"

To that Blaine nodded and Kurt pulled out his phone, looking over his list of commonly ordered from restaurants, "Burgers… pizza… thai… chinese... italian…"

"Burgers. The greasier the better."

Kurt let himself smirk a little. It had been awhile since he had been as hungover as Blaine was now, but he remembered his desire for gross, stomach swelling foods when he had been in Blaine's place. Stepping out of the room he made the order and then called the lobby to let his guys know to pay for and bring the meals up before walking back in on Blaine who was trying to curl back up.

"You need to shower."

"Don't want to."

"You stink."

"So?"

"So the sheets now stink the same as you and I don't want to sleep in them tonight. Get up, shower. You'll feel better."

Kurt felt like a parent scolding a child, and just like a child Blaine got himself up and skulked off to the bathroom, allowing Kurt to change his bedding - something he hadn't done for himself in ages. The shower ran so long that the steam crept out over the top of the door leading into the bathroom and Kurt wondered if the whole building would soon be out of hot water. Eventually Blaine emerged, pruney and wrapped in a towel - Kurt's cue to leave him alone again so he could get dressed.

They ate their lunch watching a show on TV that Kurt had randomly selected, and while Blaine watched it, Kurt watched Blaine - just as he had at the theater. He needed to figure out how to make Blaine want to stay of his own accord. He needed to know how to make Blaine really want him, and not just as a way to get out of his entrapment.

"Do I have something on my face?" Blaine chirped at one point, and Kurt found himself caught in the act, briskly turning his face back to the screen.

"No. Zoned out."

"You're always zoning out in my direction."

"Coincidence."

"Doubtful."

Kurt took in a deep breath and let out an equally long sigh. "I took the day off. Is there anywhere you want to go?"

"The police station."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Besides that."

Blaine shrugged his shoulders up once. "I don't know. Anywhere. I'm sick of being stuck in here."

"We could go shopping, or to a movie, or -"

"The zoo."

Kurt's eyebrows shot up as he regarded Blaine curiously, waiting for him to laugh as if it were a joke, but the laugh never came and Blaine looked back at him solidly.

"The zoo?"

Blaine nodded. "I don't want to sit around any more than I already do, I don't need any more clothing - especially since you're the only one seeing it, and I've never been to the zoo."

In truth, Kurt hadn't either, but the thought had never hit him that he might want to. "Okay."

He left Blaine to call his chauffeur to let him know the route and also informed his guards below before going upstairs to change into a more casual outfit. All the while his mind raced, trying to plot out if Blaine had an edge to his zoo idea, if maybe there was something Kurt was missing that would allow him to escape or alert someone to his situation - but nothing came to mind and that worried Kurt more than if he could fathom something.

They left, with the usual escorts, and arrived at the zoo where Kurt bought tickets for four - himself, Blaine, and his two on duty guards. Blaine was bouncing on his toes at this point, and it wasn't until he rushed ahead to look at the penguins that Kurt realized just how boyish Blaine was.

"They're so much more adorable in real life!"

That statement alone calmed Kurt's nerves, and he escorted Blaine from cage to cage, pen to pen, and each area of the zoo where Blaine was equal parts excited and in awe of each animal, reading aloud each information plague so Kurt didn't have to read it himself, and even talking to some of the animals who didn't even seem to care for his existence.

"I always wanted a pet growing up… but my mom was allergic…" Blaine admitted when they were watching the lion yawn before them. "... but now I think that was just an excuse not to have something else to care for."

It was that admission that prompted Kurt to inform the driver to make a pit stop on their way back to the apartment, pulling up at a pet store and nodding towards Blaine as he looked back at Kurt questioningly.

He might not know how to make Blaine like him, but at least Kurt could get something for Blaine that would make him understand that he cared for him.


	12. Chapter 12

Blaine knew exactly what he was doing. Kurt was trying to buy his loyalty and affections and Blaine was going to milk it for all it was worth. The little angel on his right shoulder told him he shouldn't do it, that it wasn't in his nature and that Kurt was just trying to do the best he could and Blaine shouldn't take advantage of that. However, the little demon on his left shoulder reminded him that regardless of what Kurt did or didn't know, he did know he was keeping Blaine against his will and Blaine should at least do what it took to enjoy himself until he figured out how to free himself. He had purposely let it drop that he had always wanted a pet growing up, just to see if Kurt would take the bait - and he had, and now Blaine had two ridiculously cute kittens romping around the living room, play fighting with one another, and an aquarium he was setting up to provide a home for the fish that were currently living in a bowl.

The puppies had gotten his attention first at the pet store, but he knew having a dog in an apartment, especially one that would need regular walks he wasn't even sure he'd be able to give to them, was unfair to the animal, so kittens it was. He had convinced Kurt that two were necessary on the basis that they were sisters and it would be an awful shame to separate them and leave one alone and sad in the pet store.

Then Blaine had insisted that an aquarium would help to tie together the apartment and create something soothing to look at. The largest home aquarium he could find had been purchased, and Blaine had managed to construct it despite having only built a lopsided bookcase before, and he was now focusing on decorating the interior with all the bobbles and fake plants and pebbles he had procured for the different fish (and a starfish) he had brought to the apartment.

The best part was how perplexed Kurt looked whenever he went to sit on the couch and the kittens saw him as the perfect toy - attacking his feet and climbing up the back of the fabric couch as Kurt tried to scold them and tell them to get "the hell off the furniture" to no avail. At one point Kurt had to go bandage some scratches he had acquired on his toes with a grumble about "Lucifer's creatures", but to his credit he never once hit the cats or lost his temper. In fact, Blaine almost forgot about his plan to make himself appear too high maintenance for Kurt to want to keep when he saw Kurt dozing in his recliner with both kitten snuggled up on his lap.

Blaine didn't forget though, and so he began his plan, gradually requesting more things over time, which Kurt never questioned - at least not to his face, and soon Blaine had his own ereader tied to a credit card (which he purchased more books than he could possibly read), all organic foods, a towel warmer, a top of the line electric guitar with pedals, a nice strap, amplifier, and software to record and adjust music, and the most expensive hair gel on the market.

Unfortunately, instead of his requests having the desired effect of having Kurt question his want to own a human, it seemed to make Kurt happy. Kurt was soon asking if there was anything special he could order to procure for Blaine, and Blaine once again settled into a funk where he didn't ask or demand anything.

In turn, Kurt seemed to pull away again the instant Blaine's mood swung down, and once again Kurt was out of the apartment more than he was in it. Inside Blaine's brain there was a battle. On one side he argued that it was for the best that he wasn't stuck with his captor all the time, because, why on earth should he want to be? On the other hand, he just wanted someone to be there. He was still lonely, even with his fish and the kitten twins, and Kurt's dull company was better than no company at all.

Blaine continued to clean up, and make meals through it all - if only because he wanted to keep busy and fend depression off. He also knew he would need to keep his strength up just in case the opportunity to run arose.

Occasionally Kurt's guards would enter the front entrance of the apartment, and Blaine recognized that there were five of them in total, that Kurt had on some sort of alternating schedule. He would hang back in the kitchen, listening to their conversations about scoping out meeting places and how the details of an investigation would be up in Kurt's office, but they never said anything that Blaine could use to his advantage, and never gave off any suggestion that any of them could be approached by Blaine to help him.

If anything, Blaine figured out quickly to avoid them when he crossed the hall in front of the entrance and one of them laughed towards Kurt.

"Haven't broken that pet of yours yet eh? Most people don't let them dress at all and lots keep them chained."

Blaine didn't see what caused the crack and the snap that occurred quickly after that, nor did he stay to watch why the guard that had made the comment was wheezing and coughing for breath after that, but Blaine didn't doubt it came at Kurt's hand.

He didn't hear that particular guard's voice again after that.

Kurt appeared to be stressed, or as stressed as Blaine could figure a man who dealt in criminal activities could be, as time wore on. He would come in late, often go straight to the balcony to smoke, and would only come in to grab a plate of supper and a drink from the now locked bar cabinet before returning to his ashtray.

"Did you kill someone?" Blaine finally built up the courage to ask, hovering just inside the doorway to the balcony.

"No." Kurt grumbled, tapping his ashes into the pile and looking over the city as the sun set behind the towers before them. "Why do you ask?"

"You've been extra sulky."

Kurt hummed softly in thought and then looked back towards Blaine, eyeing him up and down in that way that made Blaine feel like he were being mentally undressed which put him on edge. "Why don't you ever come out here?"

"I don't like heights." Blaine admitted, taking a step back just in case Kurt decided to test his fear like Sebastian once had by dragging Blaine out by the hand to the edge of a steep rise by the ocean. If anything, that event had only made Blaine's fear worse.

"Huh." Kurt replied, neither judging nor questioning, before looking back out. "Business has just been... extra difficult this past while."

"You could quit it." Blaine suggested without thinking it through.

"You just don't quit this life."

"Why not?"

"The only way you leave this life is in a coffin."

Blaine gulped, imagining Kurt as if he were asleep, but more ashen and pale than he already was, and not breathing. "What would happen to me if you died?"

"Not sure. Haven't set up anything that way."

"Would I be free or would someone else claim me?"

Kurt was looking away, but by the way his ears lifted slightly and how his jaw tilted up, Blaine knew he was narrowing his eyes. "I don't know..."

"Are you just saying that so I don't kill you to get free?"

Kurt looked back at Blaine, and Blaine saw that his presumption about Kurt's narrowed eyes was accurate, "You're not the killing type... and I said I don't know because I've never fucking done this before... so leave it."

"It's my life. I can't just leave it..." Blaine uttered, setting a hand on the wall inside of the door to brace himself. Kurt had never hurt him before, but Blaine also knew that he probably had it in him to do so if he wanted to, and Blaine never wanted to push to that point.

"Fuck..." Kurt grumbled, stubbing out his cigarette and standing up. "I'm going cruising. Don't wait up for me."

Blaine wasn't a hundred percent sure, but he did have an inkling when he spoke just as Kurt walked past him. "Cruising means picking up a hooker doesn't it?"

"What the fuck do you care?" Kurt snorted, avoiding Blaine's face as Blaine followed after him towards the front door.

"I..." and as Kurt asked Blaine found himself stopping in his tracks. Why did he care? Why should he? "...don't."

"Good." Kurt snapped, slamming the door behind him and leaving Blaine there wondering why he had followed after Kurt and wondering why, despite saying he didn't, did care, to the point where it was making him angry that Kurt was leaving him to go get his jollies with someone off the street. Not just angry, jealous.

He knew he shouldn't be jealous. Every logical part of his brain was telling him that it was better Kurt was doing that with someone else then with him, and it also meant he didn't have to spend as much time with his captor.

Yet the arguments his mind presented to him were smacked down by the desire to rush down after Kurt and plead with him to stay in the apartment, to keep him company, and touch him if that's what he needed.

It brought a blush to his cheeks, and he had to shake his head to get the thoughts out of him. He definitely had Stockholm syndrome he decided. There was no other explanation for it.

Yet, knowing that he must have Stockholm syndrome didn't help him at all deal with the jealousy writhing its way through him like a rapid snake. For awhile Blaine tried to watch TV, but found he couldn't focus on any of the shows he flipped through, always looking towards the entryway in the hopes Kurt would return. Then he tried to read, but the lack of noise in the apartment made it hard for him to focus and when he did turn on the radio, he found he couldn't focus at all.

So that's what led up to Blaine breaking fork after fork and spoon after spoon in an attempt to jimmy the lock Kurt had on the bar cabinet. He needed something to nullify his emotions and his brain, and alcohol was the only thing he could think of.

Which in turn led to him swearing up a storm as he discovered he was no match for the lock Kurt had put on. "Fuck! Fuck! Kurt! Why the fuck did you do this?! If you're going to abandon me here at least let me enjoy myself! FUCK!"

Cutlery used up, and Blaine's hands scratched up, he began to yell up at the ceiling towards where he thought the camera in the room was based on the slight gap in the wall and the black reflective spot within it. "I'm tired of this! So fucking tired! Is sex all you want?! Fine! I want it! Is that what you want to here? What do you want me to do? This?"

Blaine began to strip himself down, taking his flaccid dick in hand and stroking it over in front of the camera until he needed to sit back on the couch, sprawled out and all exposed - not even sure if Kurt was seeing what he was doing, and not even sure himself of why he was doing it. Once he began though, he didn't want to stop, and the thoughts he usually had of Sebastian were instead replaced with those of a tall, chestnut haired mobster that smoked more than he spoke, and frustrated Blaine more than he could measure. Before he knew it, Blaine was touching himself in the ways he knew worked for him, having not done this since before he had been captured because he wasn't sure just where the camera's were in the apartment and hadn't wanted to put on a show for Kurt unwillingly. He circled his fingers over his nipples, until they were as hard as his dick, and he smoothed those same fingers down between his cheeks, breathing going higher as he ran them over his dimpled pucker.

"Is… this… what you want?" He panted, half lidded eyes looking towards that camera. "Because you can have it."


	13. Chapter 13

There were a lot of boys out tonight, and really, they were boys by their looks. It was the boys who made the best livings in street walking, and once they got too old they were relegated to less travelled streets by their pimps, used up, beat up, and taking whatever they could get.

The problem was, as Kurt saw it though, was that none of the boys advertising their services on this particular night were doing anything for him. He had never been this picky before, and even had a few favorites that he had said no to when they walked up to the cadillac he was driving solo in that evening. Really, to let off the kind of steam he needed to get rid of, any willing hole should have done, but he didn't want just any hole and that was the cause of his problems. All he could think about was how Blaine was wearing a pair of particularly tight pants when he had spoken to Kurt earlier, and how Blaine would press and plump his lips together whenever he paused to think.

Kurt's phone buzzed, alerting him to an increase in noise levels in the apartment. He used to check each of those alerts, snapping to camera view, but these days the noise came more from Blaine practicing on his instruments and it was embarrassing how much Kurt wanted to hum along with the show tunes he played. So Kurt had stopped paying attention, knowing that if Blaine tried to escape he would get a proximity breach alert anyhow.

Kurt had thought things were better after he had taken a day to spend with Blaine. Blaine had begun to ask him for things, which Kurt presumed was a good sign. It meant Blaine was settling in, feeling more comfortable, and trying to make himself feel more at home. Then, as abruptly as that behaviour seemed to start up it stopped and Blaine was once again moody and fussy - just in time for Kurt's clients to be the same.

They wanted him to take sides. The deal was going sour despite all of Kurt's work and attention. If they hadn't invested money already it would have been something they could have all just walked away from, but they had, and now it was a matter of trying to work around their demands - both wanting more money back then they had put in, and each accusing Kurt of siding with the opposite side when he tried to explain the conflict.

He should have never agreed to such a risky venture.

So it was that work was stressful, and home was no better. When he could manage a moment to sit down, those damned kittens would try to attack him. If Blaine wasn't so damned adorably domestic when he played and cuddled with them then Kurt would have kicked them to the curb a long time ago.

Not that getting the damned creatures seemed to be working in his favour anyhow.

Begrudgingly, Kurt drew away from slowly driving down the same corners he had been circling around the past hour. As much as he needed a good orgasm, it was clear that he wasn't in a mood to settle so he may as well jerk himself off in the bathroom at home and call it a night instead of wasting more gas.

Of course, that was before he stepped into the apartment and the first thing he heard was a low, choked out moan.

Kurt crept towards the source of the noise, and damn near dropped his jacket from his arm at the sight before him. Legs spread apart on the cushions, completely naked, with one hand around his cock and the other working a finger in and out of his ass was Blaine. It was certainly the last thing Kurt expected to see, and what came next was even more shocking to him.

Blaine hadn't yet seen Kurt, or if he had he was certainly playing coy, because his head tipped back and he groaned out "..Yeah…Kurt…"

Kurt's pants rapidly became too tight as he had the fastest growing erection of his life, and then he really did let his jacket drop as he reached up to loosen his tie and strode across the room. It all became clear. Blaine had pulled away because Kurt hadn't picked up on cues that Blaine wanted more, and what clues Blaine might have dropped, Kurt didn't know, nor did he focus on working out at that particular moment because his brain short circuited and left his other head in charge.

"God you've always been so gorgeous…" Kurt murmured, crouching down before Blaine who then, and only then, noticed Kurt with his blacked out eyes. Blush took over his face from his cheeks right to the tips of his ears, and a shaky breath was let out as Blaine averted his eyes shamefully.

"Did you…?"

See it? Yes. Kurt thought first, how could he have missed seeing Blaine like that, but then realized Blaine was asking something else entirely and Kurt shook his head. "No. None would do."

If Blaine intended to say anything in response to that, he didn't manage to get it out before Kurt dropped his lips hungrily over the head of the the reddened cock before his head, and pulled Blaine's hand away from it so he could fill his mouth with the entirety of his heavy flesh. The half-sob, half-gasp above him, and the way Blaine's hands dropped to his sides let Kurt know that what he was doing was wanted, needed even, and so he drew his tongue and lips up and down, over and around Blaine's dick to familiarize himself with each vein and each patch of skin.

Kurt knew Blaine was clean from the records that had come with him, and so Kurt let himself enjoy the novel flavor that came from burying his nose in the tightly coiled black hairs of Blaine's crotch, and drank up the taste of Blaine's precum was such delight that his stomach growled for more. However, Kurt couldn't push the image of Blaine fingering himself out of his mind and with a lewd pop, he pulled himself off Blaine'd cock right before the man came in it and wrapped his arms around Blaine's back and legs to pick him up.

"What…?" Blaine heaved out among heavy breaths, and Kurt looked him over in fascination, wondering how many sides to Blaine there was as he carried him up the stairs and to the bedroom. There was the kind, sweet Blaine from his memories that surfaced in the way he cared for his pets, and in how he tended to the apartment. There was the fierce Blaine that fought for his freedom and smashed plates. There was the side of Blaine that made him act without thinking, drinking to excess and running up to animals at the zoo like a child. Now there was this Blaine - seductive, lustful, and needy.

Kurt definitely liked this side.

Blaine's mind finally seemed to catch up with what Kurt's intentions were when Kurt set him on the bed and went about peeling his own clothing off in haste. Once again he spread out his legs, on full display to Kurt like an offering and no less flushed than he had been the instant he noticed Kurt downstairs. If he had just been some whore off the street, Kurt wouldn't even have to wait to take him since most of the guys Kurt had hired had prepped and kept plugs in to keep themselves ready for this customers.

But Blaine was definitely no whore. His body was unused, well fed, and toned. He didn't have to wear provocative outfits to catch Kurt's attention, and the tiny wink of a hole that he presented was clenched firmly together as if his finger hadn't even been in there.

Kurt grabbed the lube and condom out of the pants he had discarded, originally to be used for someone else, and climbed up on the bed between Blaine's legs. Either from nerves or fear, Blaine tensed up then, but didn't pull away, instead resting his head back on the pillow and closing his eyes. Perhaps he had had bad sexual experiences in the past and was preparing for the worst. Kurt had experienced that back in his first few sexual encounters, resulting in him now topping all of the time. Guys didn't seem to know the first thing about proper preparation, or just didn't care.

He wouldn't do that to Blaine though.

For so long this had been a fantasy of Kurt's, and as he lubed up his fingers and rubbed them over Blaine's rosy pucker, he bent down to kiss the insides of Blaine's thighs, silently worshipping the boy that allowed him to smile once, and that he now had the opportunity to thank.

Kurt was purposely slow, pushing his finger in against the hard ridge of muscle that did not want him to enter, and also fighting against the tension in Blaine's body, tension he could see in the way Blaine snapped his eyes shut hard and gritted his teeth as well as in how tightly his finger was gripped by the walls of Blaine's hole. He worked that finger in and out just as slowly, dribbling lube onto his finger whenever it exposed itself to push back into Blaine. Eventually, Blaine's breathing evened out, and his body relaxed enough for Kurt to add a second finger alongside the first.

"Oh… Oh…."

Kurt watched as Blaine tensed back up again with addition, his caterpillar eyebrows furrowing together. Yet, as was the case with the first finger, Blaine's body did give after a series of slow thrusts and Kurt began to scissor the fingers out inside of Blaine, looking for the sweet spot he had only on occasion found within himself.

Blaine's was much less of a hidden treasure, and within a minute Kurt had Blaine yelping and crying out all at once. "Yes!" and "God!" were interchanged with each bump over the bundle of tightly packed nerves on Blaine's prostate, and he didn't even flinch when a third finger was finally inserted.

Managing with surgeon like skill to tear the condom wrapped open and roll it over himself, Kurt able to get himself ready with one hand while working the other in and out of Blaine to the point where he had his head thrown backwards and he was swearing up at the ceiling in jubilant ecstasy, so close to coming based on how precum dripped down over his throbbing cock.

When Kurt removed his fingers, Blaine gasped and squeezed the blanket under him with his knuckles, already white from keeping a firm grip on said blanket throughout the prepping process. His hand went to hold the inside of Blaine's right thigh while the other held down his left thigh, and Kurt pressed his cock into the waiting hole, dripping with lubricant, and groaning embarrassingly loudly as he pushed his way inside.

Blaine's cries for god were now prefixed by 'Oh!', and Kurt was mindful to keep himself from just slamming in and out as quickly as he could, as was normal with the streetwalkers he knew, in favour of savouring this moment that he only thought would ever be a dream, and ensuring he didn't break Blaine under him with just how ferociously he wanted him.

The one thing Kurt hadn't done yet was kiss Blaine, but now, in that position, he let his head fall forwards and kissed the corners of Blaine's mouth as he bottomed out, and then kissed over the pinched together lips as he slid back. Those rosy lips matched the color of the cock trapped between their bodies, and tasted just as sweet, and Kurt slid his tongue aggressively between them as he began rolling his hips back and forth. He wanted nothing more than to be inside of Blaine as much as he could, and when Blaine's lips yielded to him, he focused on letting his tongue map out the inside of Blaine's mouth just as much as his cock was mapping out the inside of Blaine himself.

The one thing Kurt didn't want to have happen was for him to come too quickly, a feat that was becoming difficult to manage as each push in brought him close to the edge. His stomach was fluttering, his fingers buzzing, and his toes were curling though, and any part of him that managed to have any iota of willpower shrivelled up the instant Blaine whimpered softly, tears pressing out of the corners of his eyes, and then came without even being touched - leaving ropes of white come on Kurt's chest and his own with a final cry of "Oh! God! Yes!".

That was it for Kurt, an invitation for him to unravel - which he did, bucking his hips up one final time and locking himself in position as he filled his condom up with his own spunk, teeth grinding down on each other as he held back from yelling whatever it was his mind would come up with, and then collapsing on top of Blaine's already boneless body to find his breath.

"That was… that was okay…" Blaine murmured drowsily after a moment of shared huffing and panting from them both, Kurt rolling himself off of Blaine and sitting up on the edge of the bed to tie off the condom and grab his shirt from the ground to wipe himself off with.

"Just okay?" Kurt said, smirking a little despite what could have been taken as a slight against his sexual prowess.

"Well… I mean… I remember hearing guys saying it would hurt and be awful."

"What?" Kurt looked back at Blaine, who hadn't moved at all yet.

"Anal sex. They said their first times were horrible and it would take a few times for it to feel good."

Shit. Kurt lost his voice for a moment as he realized that not only had Blaine given himself to him, but he had given that traditionally sacred first time to Kurt. He hadn't even considered that Blaine wouldn't have had that experience yet given how good looking Blaine was and how he was in a college program where the number of gay men was well above average - giving them ample opportunity to hook up.

"But it didn't hurt… so… yeah… it was good." Blaine continued, eyes sleepily settling on Kurt before closing again.

Kurt frowned to himself, standing on jelly-like legs to amble into the bathroom and wet a hand towel which he brought back to the bedroom and wiped Blaine, who was already fast asleep, off with. His mind whirled with worries and reflections on what he had just done, not sure if he had done everything right, and wondering if he could have made it special somehow. His own first times were nothing worth remembering - done for the sake of getting it over with in the backrooms of bars and clubs, and nothing since then had compared to the intimacy he had just experienced.

But he hoped it was enough.

With Blaine cleaned, Kurt lifted the blanket up and over him and then crawled in beside him, tentatively wrapping an arm over Blaine's waist and snuggling up. This was new, and something he remembered always wanting when he was younger. Having someone to hold and cuddle with - back when he thought that was as sexy as things could ever be. If the sex was good, the ability to be able to be close and snuggle Blaine was phenomenal.

The best part was - it wasn't a dream anymore.


	14. Chapter 14

Blaine had been able to sleep through the night, and though he forgot his dreams the instant consciousness hit him, he knew they must have been pleasant by their lingering after effect - a steady heartbeat, the feeling of safety, and a smile playing over his lips. It took him a couple seconds to recognize that he was bound up in Kurt's arms, and a couple more seconds to remember the events of the night before, and just like like that his steady heartbeat was replaced with a thump-thump-thump knocking the air out of his lungs.

His superego and id woke up with his memory, and immediately began to fight - yelling through his head so a headache was inevitably. When it came to how he felt, Blaine felt… okay. He didn't mind the warm, muscular arms holding him snugly. It was nice in fact. No one had ever kept him so close. When it came to what he thought though, his reason snapped into place - yelling at him for being a needy moron the night before, for giving himself up so easily, and for not wiggling right out of Kurt's arms the instant he woke up.

But even with the lecture he was giving himself internally, Blaine didn't pull away. He let himself be held, and in turn pressed his cheek against Kurt's chest, listening to the solid beat of the other man's heart and wishing this wasn't so complicated. He had felt good last night. For so long he had been holding out, trapped by words Sebastian had spoken back in his junior year about "virgins being the most delicious" or something that seemed equally inane now. Blaine hadn't even thought about Sebastian last night. For the first time in… years… Sebastian wasn't the focus of his fantasy, and even though it was his captor that had taken that piece of Blaine, Blaine didn't find himself regretting it. Kurt had been gentle, attentive, and so focused on making sure Blaine was alright that Blaine had been able to forget the power imbalance between them for that time. It was like they were just two boyfriends discovering one another for the first time. Every fear of Blaine's that it would hurt, or that Kurt would make him feel like a slut had been tossed away. It had been… wonderful.

So Blaine snuggled in against the other man, even bringing his hands up around Kurt to hold him back for however long the moment would last, and ignored the battle waging within him. For now, he would follow his feelings.

Kurt wasn't even snoring that morning - a definitely nice change, and though he still smelled of cigarettes, it was muted by the smell of his sweat, a reminder of how hard he had worked to make things good for Blaine the night before. Blaine had been fully prepared to fall back asleep in an effort to temporarily silence his mind when Kurt murmured something incomprehensible and brought a hand up to rub his eyes, leaving the hip it had abandoned on Blaine feeling empty and cold.

"Morning…"

"Hey." Blaine uttered quietly, suddenly feeling frozen. What if Kurt didn't enjoy himself the night before? Blaine had barely done anything during sex except taken it - and Blaine was pretty sure Kurt was used to being served and not doing the serving.

That was Blaine's mind constantly grinding though, and it was silenced momentarily when Kurt moved his hand down to tip Blaine's chin up and connect his lips to Blaine's. Again, Blaine's mind argued - he shouldn't be okay with being kissed. Media had consistently told him that it was somehow more intimate than sex (something he never really understood), and that taste of cigarettes and alcohol that lingered on Kurt's lips and tongue were hardly endearing. Yet Blaine found himself kissing back, his lips rolling along in time with Kurt's, letting Kurt's tongue invade his mouth, and twining his own around it when it did.

Kurt's hand continued to travel down Blaine, sliding down his side, to his waist, and over his hip, making Blaine shudder in response. He shouldn't be getting aroused by it, but he was, and when Kurt's hand found its way between their bodies, it was to meet Blaine's now erect cock which seemed to be sparring with Kurt's.

"God you're beautiful…" Kurt breathed out when he pulled away from Blaine's lips, looking almost reverently at Blaine in a way that made him blush and avert his eyes. No one ever said that about him, and it scarcely seemed right.

When Kurt reconnected his lips, it was to Blaine's now exposed neck, and Blaine didn't even realize he was moaning until he realized that it was his voice, and not Kurt's, making that noise. Kurt moved his mouth down Blaine's neck, to his collar bone, and, tossing back the blankets that covered them both, began to make his way down Blaine's body leaving small red bruises in his wake along Blaine's skin.

For his part, Blaine felt frozen again, and had to summon all his energy to roll onto his back and lift a hand to set in Kurt's hair, following his passage down south. Why he was so alright with it all, he couldn't understand, but his brain short circuited and ended the debate inside him the moment Kurt took his cock into his mouth and began sucking it as eagerly as he had the night before.

When his back arched up in response, the slight burn within him and the ache of muscles that had been spread the night before hit him. Yet, instead of taking away from the feeling of Kurt's tongue rolling tightly around his dick, it just seemed to add to it. It didn't matter what Kurt wanted to do with him next, Blaine knew he'd take it - and happily too. Why he had waited so long to experience this seemed insane to him.

He expected Kurt to want more, to move onto his ass, but Kurt continued to suck like Blaine's dick had the antidote to some disease he was suffering, and despite trying his best to hold back, Blaine found himself flinging an arm over his eyes and whimpering in an attempt to warn Kurt - who just seemed spurned on by the noises Blaine was making and sucked even harder such that there was no way Blaine could hold back, coming into Kurt's mouth and covering his own to stop himself from crying out like his vocal cords were trying to.

Blaine's mind went blank after that, and it could have been two seconds or two hours that he enjoyed the nothingness that was inside his skull before Kurt travelled back up his body, licking the corners of his own lips before dipping his head down and pressing chaste kisses over Blaine's lips.

Kurt got up then, and Blaine's mind immediately sent up an alert. "You.. you didn't…"

"I'm okay." Kurt assured Blaine, running his fingers over Blaine's chest which sent shivers up and down his spine. "I'm going to shower."

Which left Blaine to wonder if he had done something wrong when he heard the shower turn on in the bathroom, and, which in turn, gave way for Blaine's voices to pop back into his head chastising him for letting that happen and giving him grief for feeling guilty that Kurt didn't get off at all.

Except he had. Blaine sat up with a wince, and looked down over himself - covered in hickeys. That's when he saw the wet spot near the end of the bed and, realising that he couldn't have done that, understood that Kurt got off while getting him off.

The thought was undeniably hot.

Little mewls and cries got Blaine's attention next, and he forced himself to stand up and walk to the bedroom door so he could open it and let his kittens in, who bounded in and climbed up the bed before looking at Blaine as if he had done them a grave disservice by locking them out overnight. He chuckled and returned to bed to pet them both, each one getting a hand, and making up for the lack of cuddles they hadn't got the night before.

When Kurt came out of the washroom, Blaine let himself stare. Most of the time he avoided Kurt completely when he left the bathroom, a towel bound around his waist and looking every bit as sinful as he actually was, but this morning Blaine figured he was entitled to stare at the man he was still hungry for more of.

"I have to go to the office." Kurt announced, as if Blaine wasn't already aware of it. "But I have a free chunk of time around lunch to mid afternoon if you'd like to go out for lunch with me."

Blaine nodded. Of course he would. He reveled in those too scarce moments outside of the apartment, but even more now he wanted to be around Kurt. Blaine watched as Kurt got dressed, mentally putting duct tape on the voice inside him telling him that he wasn't that kind of man, that he shouldn't be ogling his captor, and that he was losing his mind.

It wasn't until Kurt left for his office that Blaine let himself freak out. He ran his fingers down and over his ass, wincing at how tender his muscles and hole felt, and nipping his bottom lip when his mind yelled at him that it was because he let Kurt in there. The hickeys decorating his body were finally registered as Kurt claiming him and he covered himself up quickly so he didn't have to see them anymore.

His mind was as scheming as it was chastising though, and as Blaine tried to keep himself busy throughout the morning, he got flashes of his night before with Kurt whenever he blinked, and it made him shiver with want and need, which in turn made his brain scream at him for what it saw as self-traitorism.

When Kurt came home at lunch, Blaine all but tackled him. He was tired of the voices in his head. He needed them silenced. He needed to feel okay with himself. So lunch was cancelled, and Blaine listened to how he could moan and cry out as Kurt had sex with him on the couch, spreading him open and filling him up just as he had the night before and making Blaine feel like everything was okay… more than okay - amazing.

It was the same that night, when Kurt came home after midnight and looking especially exhausted. If Kurt looked taken aback at lunch, he looked completely shocked when Blaine pinned him to the bed and reciprocated the line of hickeys down his body before begging Kurt to take him for the third time in just over a day.

And just like the night before, Blaine fell asleep wrapped up in Kurt's arms, telling the voices inside him to shut up, and focusing on how perfect it felt to be cared by someone.


	15. Chapter 15

Kurt was tired.

Skip that.

Kurt was damned worn out.

The deal at work continued to have its ups and downs, taking its stressful toll on Kurt, and at home… well… at home Kurt really couldn't complain. Things there had been fantastic. Having sex with Blaine seemed to have fix whatever it was that had broken, and now Kurt wished he could just stay home all the time. Blaine was insatiable, and sure, that made Kurt's crotch insanely sore, to the point he winced every time his dick rubbed against the fabric of his underwear, but it was a problem Kurt was happy to have. It meant Blaine wanted him. Truly wanted him, and for Kurt, who hadn't been wanted in…., he couldn't even recall, it made his heart flutter and leap. He'd give Blaine whatever he wanted, be it himself or presents, to keep him that happy.

"You haven't even gone out to smoke today." Blaine cheerfully noted as he wiped off the counter, hips moving in time to the music on the radio - a hypnotizing sight for Kurt who was leaning back against the counter waiting for his coffee to brew.

Kurt glanced over to the balcony, considering when he had his last cigarette. For all intents and purposes he should be quavering with the need for nicotine right then, but he was miraculously alright. Looking to his hands he noticed they weren't even shaking when he held them still. Not an ounce of withdrawal. Maybe his body was so spent with the hormonal surges he had been experiencing to notice he had replaced one vice with another.

"That a problem?" Kurt finally asked of Blaine, locking his eyes on the ass bouncing around before him tauntingly as Blaine put away clean dishes into the lower cupboards. Kurt knew quite well it wasn't a problem for Blaine, who had complained since the start about the smoking, but the playful banter came easily now, such that he had to wonder when he had developed a flirtatious side.

"No." Blaine crooned, turning around and edging up on his toes to peck Kurt sweetly, "You taste better without it."

Kurt let out a wavering breath the instant Blaine turned back to the dishes. He was done for. Any hope he had of keeping up an emotional wall between himself and Blaine had ran out the door and left him there, open and exposed. "I want to take you out tonight."

"Don't you have business to attend to?" Blaine asked, looking back over his shoulder to Kurt.

"For once.. not tonight… and I mean it too. I want to take you out."

Blaine smirked a little, and Kurt had to mirror the expression. Every time Kurt suggested they go out, Blaine had surprised him. He had either tackled him against the wall, greeted him in nothing but one of Kurt's ties, or made Kurt follow a trail of candy (which the kittens had knocked around in places) up to the bedroom where Blaine had prepped himself and was just waiting.

"Okay. I promise I'll be wearing something appropriate and won't attack you." Blaine said rather coyly, reaching over to run a hand over Kurt's side. "At least not right away."

Kurt had to grit his teeth and will his sore dick down. God. Blaine would be the absolute end of him. If his intention was to wear Kurt's cock right off than he was well on the way to that goal.

"Your books from NYADA should be delivered this morning too. I'll bring them home with me. I'm sure you'd like to get a head start on them." Kurt noted, deftly changing the subject to try and rid his mind of the images of Blaine in all kinds of positions under him.

"Oh… yeah…" Blaine responded, blinking a few times such that Kurt had to wonder if he even remembered that he would be starting school again in under a week. Kurt would miss coming home to homemade lunches, but he was less worried about Blaine running off with how amorous Blaine was towards him and how settled he seemed now.

Plus, Blaine being at school might actually give Kurt's cock a chance to recover. He'd never had this much sex in the entirety of his life. Usually he waited until he felt like he was going to burst before buying an hour off whatever willing hole approached him first, but now… well now he was sure the streetwalkers that frequented the streets he went to must assume he was dead or gone.

Kurt took Blaine out to the fanciest Italian restaurant he knew of that night, and beamed when Blaine actually revealed his knowledge of the language by conversing with the waiter regarding the wine selection. Kurt let him order for both of them, and was delighted by Blaine's choice - almost as good as Blaine's own cooking.

Then he took Blaine to another show - this time an opera, which Blaine admitted he had never been to before and seemed to enjoy, watching and mouthing songs along with the singers on stage, translating the latin for Kurt, who, while he enjoyed the opera, really never knew the whole plot without reading translations later on.

Blaine, in fact, babbled on incessantly about the opera as Kurt took him out for frozen yogurt afterwards. He went on and on about everything from the stage lighting to the voices of the actors, and the costumes they wore. Kurt hung onto every word, not really listening, but instead letting the sweet, soothing tone of Blaine's voice blanket him. He could listen to Blaine all day long.

They walked after that, strolling through Manhattan, and Kurt took Blaine's hand in his - half protective, half affectionate, and Blaine let his hand be held. Several feet behind them, Kurt's guards followed, as they had all night long, silent and stoic. They were there just as much for Kurt's protection as they were to ensure Blaine didn't make a run for it.

"Would you be interested in a hotel tonight?" Kurt asked as they meandered through Times Square, ignoring the pedallers and watching Blaine in the glow of all the neon lights, looking even more handsome than normal.

"Huh?" Blaine glanced over, having been paying attention to a juggler a few meters away. "Well.. yeah, but you don't need to…"

"I want to." Kurt insisted, letting out a long sigh as he scanned over Blaine's caramel coated eyes which were accented with the different colors that the screens were playing. "Something… new."

"Okay then. You're the one with the credit cards anyhow."

Kurt chuckled, and nodded over one of the guards, having him reserve a suite at the Four Seasons while Blaine and Kurt continued their stroll. For one night, Kurt was able to forget what it was he had gone through, and what he had done to get by. For one night, he could just be a man in love.

Until he was interrupted anyhow.

"Hummel!"

Kurt grimaced at the voice, turning along with Blaine towards the heavy looking man with more mustard and ketchup stains on his shirt than actual shirt left. "Mr. Badry."

The man snickered, exposing his yellowed teeth and looking from Kurt to Blaine, eyes twinkling dangerously. This man represented half of the deal Kurt was trying to bridge, and had been especially finicky of late, making new demands and new amendments to the contract. "I thought your type stuck around Chelsea in the off hours."

Kurt narrowed his eyes. Generally his clients respected him enough not to make reference to his sexuality, and certainly not ones that suggested he belong in certain neighborhoods. Regardless, he needed to keep his cool and maintain his professionalism. "Not always. If you'll excuse me -"

Mr. Badry was having none of it though, grabbing Kurt's wrist such that Kurt couldn't turn away when he tried and forced Kurt to look back at him. "Hey. No offense man. Just wondering why you're taking your pet around like that."

Kurt could feel Blaine tense up through the hand he held with him, even though he was looking at the fat asshole that had interfered with his otherwise pleasant evening. "My business is my own."

"Except it ain't. You forget you work for all the families 'round here and then some."

Kurt's jaw ached as he grit down on his teeth, stopping himself from saying something regrettable. "If you have a point Mr. Badry, please make it. Otherwise I will be continuing my date."

At this point, his guards were stepping forward enough to be seen by the man, who released Kurt's arm finally on taking note of them with a snicker. "Fine. Date. Whatever you queers want to call it. See you later."

Kurt kept his eyes on the man as he left, eyes digging daggers into his back and then turned to Blaine who looked pale and fearful for the first time in weeks. "Hey. It's fine. It's just my job."

"Your job sucks." Blaine spat and looked up at Kurt. "Can we go somewhere less open now?"

Kurt, of course, agreed with a nod, walking Blaine back to the limo which drove them the short distance to the hotel where Kurt informed his guards to wait in the lobby and keep watch while he took Blaine upstairs. It wasn't the penthouse, which was presently booked, but the room was one of the best in Manhattan and he let himself smile as he watched Blaine look around in awe.

"The bathroom is bigger than any of the classrooms at school…."

Kurt chuckled at that, finally feeling more at ease after the confrontation on the street, and went to the bar to pour himself a shot of whiskey. "Why don't you check out the shower. The one at the apartment is nice enough, but this one has multiple shower heads and settings."

Like a kid in a candy store, Blaine scampered off, and Kurt smiles happily as he watched him depart. Maybe there was something of him that could be salvaged from his youth after all. Maybe his soul could be saved, if only within Blaine's heart.


	16. Chapter 16

Blaine was relieved when Kurt gave him an excuse to be alone, and as he turned on the shower (which was a feat of engineering genius), he kept out of the shower, gripping the bathroom counter and looking at himself with eyes that threatened to bloom with tears.

He had tricked himself into thinking everything was okay, that his situation was fine, but that man on the street reminded him that he was just a slave, a "pet" he said. Kurt owned him and the marks all over his body, in various states of freshness, proved it. Blaine wasn't free, and he had allowed himself to accept that and the cost had been his body. He was essentially a whore, serving Kurt for free - and enthusiastically at that. When he was in the throes of orgasmic bliss his mind left him alone, and he felt so wonderfully wonderful. Nothing mattered then. He had been using sex as a way to escape his situation and it had been working.

At least until reality reminded him of what was actually happening just an hour ago.

Blaine had convinced himself that Kurt saw him as more than a slave, but the fact that Kurt didn't stand up for him against that greasy jerk in Times Square meant he didn't. To Kurt, Blaine was just a slave, to be used and possibly discarded when Kurt tired of him.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Blaine hated what he saw. It used to be he had dressed and groomed himself in such a way to try to attract Sebastian, and now he was keeping up those habits along with letting himself be blemished all over by Kurt's lips. When was the last time his body had really been his own to dress with and do with what he wanted? Even when he had been free he had been trapped under Sebastian's personality and the need to impress him. Now on top of letting Kurt have his body he was also functioning as some kind of mafia housewife, turning a blind eye to the evils committed because it paid for all the nice things he had - and he didn't even have the respect a real spouse might have.

Blaine didn't know who he was looking at in that mirror - but he did know that whatever coping strategies he had been employing to make his life more palatable since his family had given him the cold shoulder needed to be stopped. He needed to find another way out of this situation, and he needed to stand up for himself again.

There was a knock on the door, and Blaine listened as Kurt explained that he was going to go downstairs to buy some condoms and lubricant. It made Blaine sick - not only because he knew what Kurt's intentions were, but because he knew he had led Kurt to believe that was what would be occurring that evening, and, worse still, because Blaine still reacted to the thought of having sex with Kurt in a positive way.

He wanted to be wanted so badly he was willing to be a free prostitute for it.

When he heard the door to the hotel suite shut, Blaine finally forced himself into the shower, trying to scrub off the hickeys that marred his skin without success, and only making himself red and rough all over. His ass ached from all the times he had let, no, begged Kurt to take him there, and despite that he scrubbed it with soap too until it felt raw and burnt. He had the water turned up high, so that even when he wasn't soaping his body up, it still was on fire from the temperature. Blaine wanted to purge himself of Kurt's touch on his skin, and punish himself for enjoying those touches so much.

Eventually he had to leave the shower, out a lack of places left to scrub, and grimaced as he toweled off his now chapped and sore skin. He could hear that Kurt was back, rummaging around somewhere outside of the door, and knew he had to come up with either an excuse or a way to explain to Kurt that the deal was off. He could no longer give up what little self respect he had in exchange for… well, in exchange for feeling better about life in general he guessed. Blaine wondered if that part of things was really Kurt's fault or his own, but then scolded himself for even thinking of giving Kurt the benefit of the doubt.

There was a knock on the door, and Blaine grumbled to himself before calling out, "I'll be right there!" Kurt usually gave Blaine whatever time he needed to get himself in order and ready. Granted that Blaine was taking an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom that evening - but still.

He redressed in his clothing, not wanting to face Kurt in a towel or less and risk giving him the wrong impression. The fabric itched against his skin, and he cursed at himself for wearing briefs and a tank top that were skin tight, meant to make himself feel more attractive when he put them on originally and now a harsh reminder of how low he had sunk.

Another knock to the door came, more insistent and Blaine hissed, "Just. One. Minute." before looking back at himself in the fogged over mirror, having to wipe out a patch on it to see himself at all. He looked less tanned and more red in color, and his curls were tight ringlets that reminded him of the perm his mother used to get to match up better with her curly haired husband and sons. Blaine didn't have the gel to tame them though, having not planned to stay the night out, and, quite frankly, didn't feel he should have to anyway since, as he kept trying to convince himself, he wasn't there to impress Kurt anyhow.

The door was yanked open then, tearing the frame apart where the bolt had been locked from the force of the motion, and Blaine spun in spot and backed against the counter out of surprise with the 'Rrrr-ep' noise it screamed out behind him.

Kurt wasn't there.

Instead, two burly guys, straight out of some muscle building magazine that was pro-steroids, stood before him blocking the way out of the bathroom. If they had been wearing firemen's uniforms or cop uniforms Blaine might have thought he had missed a fire drill or that someone had finally realized he was missing and tracked him down. However, the pair were in suits and black leather jackets, with dark sunglasses to add to their threatening demeanor. One had a crowbar, pressed against the door where it had been torn open, while the other had a gun.

Which was pointed at Blaine.

"This the one that he wants?" The one with the gun asked of his comrade.

"Yeah…" The other guy muttered, pulling out a piece of paper and looking up and down from it to Blaine, who seemed to be without the ability to vocalize anything out of fear. "It's him."

"Good."

The guy with the crowbar pointed it at Blaine and gestured forward with his other hand. "You come easy, this won't be a problem."

Blaine's voice sprouted back up then as he recognized this was probably not a situation he wanted to be in. "Who the hell are you guys? What do you want with me?"

"No questions. You come easy, you don't hurt."

Well that was a succinct way to put it, however Blaine was already riled up by preparing to give Kurt an earful and he certainly wasn't going to let some nobodies, guns or not, tell him what to do.

"I will not go with you! You tell me what the hell you want and I- OOF!"

It had only taken a split second, but Blaine found himself on the floor, coughing and sputtering and wishing he had done more in the way of mixed martial arts aside from stage fighting class. He had been struck in the gut with the crowbar - and he immediately knew it wasn't a hit he wanted to experience again. Blaine might be called a coward, but he knew when to back down to live another day.

They didn't stop to ask him to go along nicely again though. One of them shoved a boot down on his back while the other grabbed his hands and secured them with something that felt like hard plastic behind him.

"Where's Kurt?" was the first thing to snap out of his mouth when he was lifted up, inwardly raging at how small he was such that they could pick him up like a rag dog, and also cringing from the way his stomach felt like it was all bruised.

"Shut up pet."

Duct tape was slapped over his mouth then, taking away his ability to speak, and Blaine began to panic more than he knew was possible, thinking of how these two might have been sent to torture him… or worse.

And the one person that might have gotten him out of this situation, the one person that he had just been wishing wasn't around, was the one person Blaine wanted most right then…. but Kurt wasn't around.


	17. Chapter 17

Kurt took his time walking down to the store on the corner of the block, waving to his guards on the way out of the hotel as he did. He milled about in the store for a good while too - not because he wasn't sure about what he wanted to get, but because he needed a breather.

He was still cooling down from his encounter on the street with Badry, and before he could really give Blaine the attention he was sure Blaine wanted from him, based on how the past month had gone, he needed to calm down and refocus. So he picked at the different chocolate bars, chips, and packets of gum all under the ever watchful eyes of the brown skinned man behind the counter who no doubt was wondering what the hell a well dressed man was doing in his shop poking at things but not picking anything up.

Eventually Kurt did grab some condoms, a small bottle of lube, and some tic tacs though, which he set up on the counter and threw down a bill for as the man bagged them in a little brown bag. On the way back to the hotel, Kurt also enjoyed a cigarette and walked slowly so as he could finish the whole length of it. Nothing solidified his nerves like those little cancer sticks, and while he could see himself axing the habit out of love for Blaine one day, he needed it then and there.

The squeal of tires on the pavement broke him out of his reverie and he glanced up in time to catch an old, blue van streak past - out of place in one of the richest spots in New York. It cued him to pop a few mints into his mouth and return to the lobby where he waved again to his guards to let them know he was returning and took the elevator up to one of the highest floors.

When Kurt got to the room however, the door was ajar - which immediately struck him as worrisome because all the hotels he had ever stayed in had weighted doors which closed themselves unless purposely held open. Further inspection upon moving closed revealed the key card lock was pushed out.

With one hand Kurt grabbed his cell phone and alerted the guards downstairs to come to his location, and with the other he pushed the door open fully, waiting if he could see or hear a reaction from inside before stepping in.

He didn't see anything, or anyone. There was a fog that had dispersed from the bathroom, which was already clearing as the windows and mirrors had clear patches showing on them, but there was no movement, no voices…

No Blaine.

"Blaine?" Kurt called out, his heart starting to race at the thought that something had happened - whether Blaine had escaped or someone had done something to him. He teetered close to the doorway, afraid to move in further. Kurt had no gun and didn't want to have to find a body… especially if it was the one he cared most about.

His guards came up behind him, guns drawn as they went to each of his sides and then past him, fanning out and checking all the rooms, closets, nooks, and cranny's before one of them nodded Kurt forward.

"You'll want to look at the bed."

Again Kurt hesitated, not wanting to ask, but still knowing he needed to go look, for better or worse, at what they had found of interest.

Now if Kurt had seen what was on the bed months ago, it might have piqued his interested because it would have been novel and question inciting. He likely would have known what he was looking at, but wouldn't have associated it with anything or anyone, and guessed that foul play had occurred, but not batted an eye at the thought. Kurt knew what happened when families crossed each other, or when pets were disobedient, so he was familiar with what he was looking at and the message that was being sent to him through it - but now that he had Blaine, loved Blaine, and had established with himself that he would do almost anything to keep Blaine safe and secure, the item on the bed made him nauseous to his core.

A note, scrawled with the hotel pen discarded beside it, said simply that Kurt was to go to a specific address at the beginning of the next hour. That was positive. It meant Blaine hadn't run, and that he was alive given that his captors clearly planned to use Kurt against him.

What was upsetting was what was laying on the bottom of the note.

Drops of blood, already soaked and drying into the paper accompanied a small metal disc, one that Kurt knew was a pet tracker. When they implanted them it was a minor incision behind the ear and a slip in. To take it out though usually was more difficult as it drifted, and the only other time Kurt had seen one before was when someone else had had their pet used as collateral against them, and on seeing that pet later, Kurt couldn't help but notice the ugly scar running along the side of her head from where they had cut her open to pluck out the tracker.

It meant that not only could Kurt not track Blaine, but he also knew that they had hurt Blaine to get at Kurt.

And hurt Kurt in the process.

The meeting time wasn't far off, and Kurt knew that they did that on purpose to stop him from making plans and connecting with others. If he wanted to save Blaine, he needed to move fast, and, signalling his guards, that's exactly what he did - racing out the door with the pair at his heels.

He would save Blaine.


	18. Chapter 18

Blaine's mouth was itchy. He wanted to be able to rub his lips and jaw over, but his hands were still tied back, now raw and broken around the wrists where he had tried to fight off the ties on them. Unable to see them, Blaine could feel that he had bled from when he had tried to use strength to pull himself out of them, and his hands alternated between a buzzing numbness and scream worthy pain. However, screaming wasn't going to happen because his mouth had been taped back with not one but two layers of duct tape which was a contributing factor in the itchiness around his mouth and jaw, and while he had tried to scream on a few occasions through the adhesive covered fabric, all that happened was that saliva accumulated in his mouth and his throat ached from the effort.

He had screamed against the tape a lot when they had held him down against the hotel bed. His first screams came from seeing the switchblade used on him approaching his head, and in a frantic struggle to get away he had been punched and held down long enough for him to scream again in agony as the blade sliced a line behind his ear and the tip of the blade was dug in by his skull to pry out a small piece of metal which was flicked down in front of his eyes. Blaine assumed it was the thing that stopped him from leaving the apartment without an escort, and while he should have been glad to see it removed, he was in too much pain to acknowledge what getting rid of it represented.

Besides, his captors weren't interested in freeing him. Rather they were intent on stopping Kurt from tracking their movements even though Blaine watched, with tears of blood leaking from behind his ear to over his cheek where he was being held down still, as they wrote a note indicating a time and a place.

He was dragged out of the room then, and again he tried to fight back only to have another punch land in his stomach and take all the air out of him and the fight along with it. His assailants used the back staircase, carrying him along like a bag of potatoes between them, and tossed him into the back of an old van before speeding away to where he was now - some kind of butcher shop, complete with the back room with hanging carcasses of animals that had been skinned. Blaine was tied to a pole right beside the entrance to that room, and the smell made him queasy, as did seeing all the animal corpses strung up like that. If he somehow survived this, vegetarianism would be considered.

There were more men in suits there, and not one of them bothered to wipe him off or tend to what felt like a gaping wound behind his ear. Thankfully it had stopped bleeding after a while, but only when the loss of blood made Blaine lose his ability to stand up straight and have to slump down against the floor no matter how defiant he wanted to present himself as. That was when he struggled against the bonds on his wrists until he determined it was futile, and while the pain on his wrists helped draw away some of the pain in his head, it just served to make his whole body burn and ache.

He didn't immediately recognize any of the men who had gathered around the butcher shop, drinking hard liquor like it was water and smoking cigarettes as freely as Kurt used to, yet when one of them spoke, Blaine knew immediately who he was.

The guard that Kurt had muffled after he made jokes about Blaine's pet status back in the apartment. The guy was clearly a turn-coat.

"What're we supposed to do with him if Hummel doesn't show?" One of the guys grumbled, gesturing at Blaine after they had spent a good amount of time talking about their mistresses and wives.

"Hummel will show." Kurt's old guard insisted smugly. "He's got a soft spot for that one."

"Never figured Hummel to be soft about anything."

"Except maybe when it comes to seeing a hot naked bitch."

They laughed at that, and Blaine rolled his eyes as he looked down at the floor. Society had come so far in accepting sexual minorities since he had been a child, but clearly the mobs still had a primitive outlook on it.

"If Hummel doesn't show, then you do what you want with that little squeaker and then cull him."

Blaine tensed up at that, the motion making his whole body fire up with renewed aches. He didn't know what they meant by squeaker, but he sure as hell knew what they meant by cull, and Blaine wasn't in the mood to die that evening.

"We should screw him now, before Hummel shows up, and show him what happens when he crosses this family." One of the men growled, prompting Blaine to back himself against the wall to protect what little virtue he had left. For guys that seemed to like to poke fun at homosexuality, they sure didn't seem to mind the idea of giving it.

"No. We save that option for if Hummel gets here and doesn't want to bargain. That way he can watch… and if he is as valuable as buddy here says to the man, then he'll cave." The guy in charge dictated, silencing any dissenting murmurs.

Just an hour ago, Blaine had been fuming about his situation and about Kurt, and now he wanted nothing more to have that safety and that man by him. It was hardly ideal, what he had, but now that he knew what kind of men could have purchased him at that auction, he was relieved for the situation he did end up in. Kurt was definitely the lesser of two evils.

Waiting for Kurt seemed to take an eternity, and during that time Blaine worried that Kurt wouldn't show, that his insecurities would be affirmed and he would discover that he was just the throw away whore he thought he was to Kurt. Even if he wasn't though, Blaine didn't trust that Kurt valued him more than he valued his money and power. Blaine might just be a sacrifice that no one would ever know about, lost to a cause that only the sinful cared for.

Minutes ticked away on a loud clock hanging nearby that Blaine could hear but couldn't see, and as the hour passed, the men got antsy.

"He ain't coming. Let's end this bitch." One of them snarled as he came over to Blaine.

"We should fuck him 'til he bleeds and leave him on Hummel's doorstep." Said another, moving to Blaine's other side and effectively trapping Blaine between two options he didn't care for at all.

"We could sell him to the russian whore house. They need a new twink." Another suggested, and Blaine held back some bile threatening to rise up his dry throat as he realized that was the best idea thus far.

"You'll do none of those things." A familiar, light voice commanded, and Blaine lifted his head to see Kurt step out of the shadows and towards the group of men who angrily muttered and mused over how he had gotten in without being heard or seen. "You'll be letting him go with me."

"Hummel, Hummel, Hummel…" the lead man chuckled and stood up to offer Kurt his hand, which Kurt looked at and didn't take, forcing the man to shove it back into his pocket. "I see you got our message."

"I got your threat." Kurt hissed, and the men by Blaine went to stand up behind their boss, save for own who flicked open a switchblade and stood beside Blaine. It was a non verbal threat that Kurt saw, and Blaine watched as his owner narrowed his eyes at the action and tightened his grip on a briefcase he held in one hand. "I have assumptions about what you want, but perhaps you'd do best to clarify them."

"First, we want to know where your guards are." The boss noted, waving a hand to two of his grunts who went to check around the building. "Though I'm assuming you're smart enough not to try and ambush us."

"You'd be right." Kurt uttered plainly, gesturing to the table and getting a nod from the boss before he sat himself down and opened up the briefcase to reveal a laptop which he opened up and turned on. "Which is why my guards have been discharged for the evening."

"Smart boy. No wonder you rose so high in this business so young." The man said, sitting across from Kurt and looking to his returning grunts as they nodded to him. Kurt really hadn't brought any back up.

Which meant that if things really went sour, not only was Blaine dead, but Kurt probably was too, and even though Blaine wasn't exactly happy about Kurt owning him, he had to admit then that he cared enough not to want to see Kurt hurt or dead.

"So here's what I expect Hummel. You're going to transfer us all the investment paperwork, ownership, all that, plus a good ten percent of the deal from your own finances as a show of good faith. We all walk away happy."

Blaine didn't know what the investment was, nor did he know how much Kurt really had, but Blaine did know that Kurt owned an apartment that had to be in the millions as far as worth went, and that any deal big enough to cause this much drama had to be worth quite a bit as well. He was sure there was quite a lot of zeros that would be attached to whatever the guy was asking for, and Blaine wondered if Kurt would think him worth that much.

"Except we don't…." Kurt muttered, tapping away on his laptop as it lit up. "... you see, that investment was between two parties - namely yourself and Mr. Badry. Mr. Badry would not only not be pleased, but I imagine he'd go after you for it since he knows my reputation is sterling."

"Which is why you're going to compensate him out of your own pocket too. See? Everyone leaves happy… or at least alive." The last part was uttered flatly, another threat.

"No. Actually some people don't leave alive." Kurt huffed, spinning the laptop towards the boss with enough angle for Blaine to see the screen. On it was a video feed of someone's house, and a woman in front. "Like your wife for instance."

"What the hell is this!" The boss snapped, standing up quick enough for the chair to flip out from behind him and clatter to the floor as he drew his gun and pointed it directly at Kurt's head.

Kurt never flinched.

"How DARE you threaten my family!"

"How dare you threaten MINE." Kurt said back, voice only rising on the last word, along with his body. "And it doesn't end there. Flip through the channels I have."

The man tensed, and a glance to his minions had them all pulling their guns out on Kurt while he reached down to tap on the keyboard, scrolling through feeds of different homes and people. "... the fuck? Marley's wife? James' kids? How the fuck did you do this?"

"Mr. Badry will be taking over the entirety of the investment." Kurt explained, as if he didn't have an execution squad around him ready to fire. "You will back off completely."

"The fuck I will! We'll kill you and your little queer pet!"

"No. You won't." Kurt again said quiet levelly, Blaine apparently panicking enough for the both of them despite being muted and tied up. "If I don't check in every minute, they fire. If my heart rate tracker stops, they fire. If Blaine dies, they fire."

"This is bullshit. This is not how business is done!"

"This is how I do business. You had your chance to act peaceably, now you will release Blaine to me and you will be letting us leave. The guns stay drawn until we are clear of here."

There was a long, hesitant pause, and Blaine watched the boss glance from the screen, to his men, and then to Hummel before finally looking towards the guy by Blaine and nodding. The blade came down then, but not to Blaine's flesh, which he tensed in fear, but to the ties holding him in place against the pole. The instant he felt himself be freed, he scrambled towards Kurt, though stumbled a little because he was still finding it hard to balance.

Kurt wrapped an arm around Blaine's waist to help support him, slowly turning them and moving towards the front door while the mumblings behind them grew, and as they reached the door, the boss snarled out "You know I'll just find and kill you both in the worst way possible as soon as I can!"

Kurt pushed open the door, and that was when Blaine saw the silhouettes of men clad in black rushing around the building with guns drawn and aimed to the inside. "I know… that's why I told Mr. Badry what you were doing."

"Wha?!"

Blaine let himself be escorted out, not looking back as the fire of bullets shattered the glass around the business or as the screams of men falling to the ground filled his ears. Kurt had orchestrated this all as if it were some great mafia movie, except that the people behind him were real, and they were being slaughtered. He wished he could find the humanity within himself to care, but instead he only felt relief knowing that they wouldn't, couldn't come after him again.

With Kurt's arm around him, and death behind him, Blaine felt safe.


	19. Chapter 19

Kurt remained emotionless as he escorted Blaine down the street, helping him limp along to the limo parked a block away and into the back of the vehicle which took off the moment Kurt closed the door behind himself. It was in the limo that Blaine laid himself down on what was essentially a couch seat in the back, panting in soft breaths - part relief, and part exhaustion from straining himself through the walk. His body was hurting more than he realized when he had been strapped to the pole, and coming down from the adrenaline rush made his body all the more tender to any motion or touch.

He could feel a cloth being swabbed gently over his face, though his eyes were locked shut so he couldn't see Kurt's face as he was cleaned up. Blaine winced when the cloth dragged over the raw spot behind his ear and the cloth was pulled away the instant he let out an involuntary hiss of pain.

Not a moment later the vehicle stopped, and Blaine opened his eyes to see Kurt looking down over him, bottom lip being worried between his teeth. He made to sit up, assuming they were back at the apartment, but Kurt gently held his shoulder down and Blaine saw the door open and two of the guards, different ones from those that had escorted them on their date earlier, enter the vehicle before it began to move again.

One of the men replaced Kurt, strapping on some latex gloves and rolling up the sleeves of his suit while Kurt explained.

"Jay has medical training. He'll clean you up and check to make sure you're alright."

Blaine didn't argue, much less resist, as the quiet dark-skinned man checked Blaine over, including shining a light in his eyes, his mouth, and into his ear. What Blaine did suck in a breath for though was the sight of a needle being threaded in the mans hands.

"You need a couple stitches behind your ear."

The gash again went on fire, first as it was cleaned, and again when some kind of antibiotic ointment was applied before Blaine felt the prick of a needle into the flesh and he was sewn up like a rag doll.

"They'll dissolve on their own. You'll need to use two mirrors in order to ensure it isn't getting infected."

After that, Blaine was subjected to an examination of his torso (bruised, but otherwise alright), and his wrists (swabbed cleaned and wrapped in bandages). Finally he was given a shot of a painkiller that acted so swiftly that Blaine found himself smiling as the needle was pulled from his arm and dozing off to the sight of Kurt pulling a blanket up and over his body.

He had no dreams.

When Blaine awoke, his body was stiff and sore, but still relatively pain free aside from a numb feeling around his wrists and behind his ear. He was still in the limo, which seemed to be parked, and on looking around, had been left alone with one of Kurt's guards.

"Are we back at the apartment?"

The guard shook his head, looking down to his phone and sending off a text message which beeped as it went through. Blaine pushed himself up, groggily looking through the windows and tipping his head to the side as he wondered why, of all the places Kurt might choose to pit stop at before they went back to the apartment, NYADA was where they had parked.

"Where's Kurt?" Blaine asked of the guard, though didn't really expect an answer - an expectation that found itself validated as the guard looked away from Blaine.

Panic started to stir in Blaine's belly. Perhaps they were here because Kurt was cancelling Blaine's programming - too worried about future threats against Blaine's life. Blaine would find himself under even worse lock and key than he had been before. Or maybe it was something as something as innocuous as picking up supplies for Blaine.

Of course though, Kurt would have just had those mailed to the apartment.

Blaine noticed it was daytime, and by the indent in the seat, it was clear he had been sleeping in the vehicle for awhile even if it felt like he had only been out for a few minutes. Had they been driving the whole time? Had they been parked for most of it? Why didn't they just carry Blaine up to the apartment if he was under the effect of the drugs? Maybe Kurt was worried about having to leave him alone while he went about his business.

A business that included being complacent in the killing of others Blaine recalled with a shiver. Maybe they were still in the vehicle because the cops or other gangsters were checking out the apartment and it wasn't safe to be there.

He felt antsy, just being stuck in the vehicle with the guard that may have well been mute, in a parking lot so close to where he wanted to return to and without any answers. Blaine's stomach growled then, and the guard took a moment away from staring around the vehicle to reach into the little bar fridge by his seat to pull a sandwich out and hold it out to Blaine along with an orange juice.

It was purchased from a convenience store, Blaine noted to himself as he looked at the packaging, though that was hardly anything to stop him from peeling off the wrapping and biting into it as if he were starving. The fact that it was from a shop and not the apartment told Blaine that they had probably been in the vehicle most of, if not all of, the night.

The door clicked near him, and Blaine watched as Kurt and the guard that had attended to him ducked in and sat themselves down. Kurt avoided Blaine's gaze, and knocked on the glass barrier between the group and the driver, prompting the vehicle to start and drive ahead slowly.

"Why are we at NYADA?" Blaine asked insistently, looking at Kurt even though Kurt wouldn't look back at him.

"I made a mistake." Kurt said quietly.

The limo turned into another lot at NYADA rather than pulling out onto the main street in front of it, and Blaine lifted both brows as they approached the student dorm building. "What? Did you take me out of NYADA? Or was something wrong with my registration?"

"Neither…" Kurt sighed, glancing out towards the building they were parking in front of. "... the mistake was in judging my own abilities."

"What?" Blaine said with a shake of his head. If Kurt was intending to be vague, he was succeeding.

Kurt nodded towards the guard sitting closest to him then, and as the vehicle stopped moving once more that guard reached to take one of Blaine's arms while the other snapped up the opposite arm. In surprise, Blaine yelped and cast his wide eyes towards Kurt with fear and questioning.

"I thought that if I let you go… I would seem weak." Kurt began, still refusing to look at Blaine. "But it was weakness that made me keep you."

"But… what…?" Blaine struggled weakly, and then paused as he realized the gravity of Kurt's words while the guards escorted him out of the limo and helped him walk on jello-like legs towards the NYADA dorms.

Kurt was giving Blaine his freedom.


	20. Chapter 20

At first, Blaine found his freedom overwhelming. For too long he had spent his days trying to fill up time, and now he had to juggle not only school, but a part time piano teaching job, along with a social life. Most of his newly made friends also regularly invited themselves to Blaine's dorm room, which was the penthouse of dorms being single occupancy, double sized, and, somehow, having been granted permission to have pets. His two kittens were now teenaged cats, still feisty and playful but sleeping more often on the double sized bed that his friends drooled over. Everyone assumed he must have come from money in order to secure a room like that, and in a way it was true. Blaine had come from money, just not the kind of money they thought.

He didn't talk about what he had been through. At first, after he had been escorted to his room by the guards to the dorm room, which also had a kitchenette already stocked with food and all his stuff from Kurt's, he considered going to the police to tell them what had happened. Blaine put it off though, expecting the media to make a call for witnesses or information about the murders of so many mobsters that he had escaped.

But they didn't.

In fact, Blaine convinced himself that he might have imagined it all for all over a half hour until he found a small blurb about gunfire being exchanged between two rival mob families at the very end of the local news section, and nothing more after that. He had to wonder if people didn't care because it didn't involve important people, but rather the kind of people no one would miss if they died off anyway. Or maybe it was kept quiet because of the kind of people involved. Maybe they had a muzzle on the press.

Whatever the case was, Blaine didn't go to the press or the police, and not because he wanted to make it news but because he didn't know if anyone would listen, or if they did listen and he would end up making more trouble for himself because he caught the ear of someone who was in the pockets of the mob. Moreover, Blaine didn't want to make any trouble for Kurt or the guards that had helped him in the end.

His id and superego made themselves known once more, though he wasn't sure which was which. One told him that he was twisted, suffering Stockholm syndrome, and needed to get help. The other side told him he deserved this set up with paid housing, tuition, and a bank account that got regular deposits into it regardless of whether or not he needed them. The internal conflict seemed to benefit him in acting classes, his teachers giving him applause for what they called "true vulnerability" and "believable emotion" - whatever that meant. Blaine just drew on his experiences, which he was certainly more rich in now, when he was asked to play a character. If the emotion showed through, maybe it was because so many of the scenes they had selected for the class resonated with him. There was the fighting couple scene, the locked in a room scene, and the prince in distress scene… all of them Blaine felt he barely had to act for because he had been able to call upon his memories for.

While it was nice to be around other people again so much, Blaine also had to wonder why he used to think so much of it. At times it became exhausting to dabble in small talk and just hang out with others, and Blaine had internally screamed at people who came into his room so many times because he just wanted silence and time to himself. It wasn't lost on him how some of the people he had befriended were genuine, but how others were using him for his roomy dorm and the money he always had on hand to order out when he didn't have time to make food for himself. Yet Blaine didn't give those people the cold shoulder or turn them away. He knew there were worse people in the world to associate with.

At night, when he had finally ushered people out of his room and was laying in bed with a cat on either side of him, Blaine let himself think about Kurt, and it almost did seem like he had to give himself permission to do that. He wondered what Kurt was doing, if he had been replaced, and if Kurt was safe. Blaine wanted to know why Kurt kept continuing to take care of him even though he didn't have to, even having sent over a nurse the day before classes started to check how the cut behind his ear and those around his wrists had healed up.

He wanted to ask though, most of all, what Kurt had meant when he referred to Blaine as being his family to the man that had abducted Blaine. Had things been that terrible for Kurt that the only person he felt close enough to to call family was Blaine?

Despite that, Blaine held off on doing a web search for Kurt until October, and what he found made his heart sink in his chest even though his mind told him he shouldn't still feel so emotionally invested in a man that had enslaved him. The earliest article he found told him that not only had Kurt lived just down the road from Blaine in Lima, Ohio as a child, but that he had lost his mother at eight years old. The obituary he found for Elizabeth Hummel said she was a loving wife and mother, and that donations to the American Cancer Institute could be made in lieu of flowers. Following that, the next article listed Kurt as a member of the William McKinley fledging glee club, New Directions, as a member. That made Blaine arch a brow in surprise. The Warblers had been up against The New Directions in competition but Blaine definitely couldn't recall Kurt being among them.

It was probably because of the obituary he found next, one for Burt Hummel. Predeceased by his wife. Loving father. Donations could be made to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Based on the date, Kurt would have been sixteen.

After that, the articles Blaine found were New York based. Kurt was listened in advertisements as a financier of different events and businesses, but never listed among suspects when it came to drug busts or murders that occurred in those locations. Blaine couldn't find his name among any known listing of mob family members, nor in any article that referred to suspicious mob activity. The only other place Kurt's name came up was in an article from only a couple weeks prior.

_**If you can not see the image: Article with Kurt's picture. Header: SOUTHSIDE BUSINESS CLOSED AMIDST RUMORS OF SLAVERY RING; LOCAL BUSINESS INVESTOR, KURT HUMMEL, PULLS SUPPORT PROMPTING POLICE INVESTIGATION "NYPD detectives say they have discovered a slavery ring right in New York, operated by local known persons of interests in local mob families. Interest was drawn to the alleged site of the human trafficking when Kurt Hummel, a business investor, drew out his investment in the business right before an anonymous call was made to the federal authorities about the location and the business. When called for comment, Hummel noted that while he wasn't involved in the business operations, the rumors he heard surrounding its function prompted him to pull his support. Police do not consider him a person of interest in this case and encourage all individuals who have information about human trafficking in New York to step forward with information."**_

Like the other articles Blaine had read about mob activity, it was no more than a small blurb amidst other news reports, not likely to garner much attention or interest. The sight of Kurt's face though, looking as put together as he always was, stirred something Blaine had shoved away, or so he thought, deep within him. That had been the night Blaine had finally succumed to masterbating for the first time since he had been freed, Kurt's name on his lips as he came under the blankets.

It wasn't that Blaine hadn't been aroused since he had returned to NYADA, far from it in fact. With Sebastian out of his mind, Blaine finally had time to appreciate how many good looking gay men there were on campus, and even playfully flirted with several of them on a regular basis, yet, when it came to what he thought of when he touched himself, Kurt's image seemed imprinted on the insides of his eyelids. Maybe it was because Kurt had been his first, or maybe it was because he was not past whatever the relationship he had with Kurt was, but Blaine couldn't seem to scrape away those kinds of thoughts of Kurt when his dick went up. It was also the reason he had forced himself not to masterbate for so long, as he felt guilty for having those thoughts about his captor at all.

One of the things that surprised Blaine was that no one had asked about Sebastian on his return. In fact, the only mention he had heard of Sebastian was someone openly complaining about what a creep he was and that they were glad Blaine didn't hang out with him anymore.

Blaine had to wonder if Sebastian was still in that warehouse.

It was a Saturday in late October, when the leaves from the odd tree left alive in New York was scattering its red and orange leaves on the ground, only to be picked and swirled up by the wings, that Blaine found himself with a free day. No one needed piano lessons, most of his friends had gone to some fair in Jersey that he had opted out of, and there was no practices for the play he had gotten himself a part in. He took the opportunity to take a walk, and while he intended to only go for a short jaunt to stretch his legs, it ended up taking an hour and ending up with him standing in front of a building that seemed as foreign as it seemed familiar.

Kurt's apartment building.

For a long time Blaine just stood in front of it, staring up at it like tourists did in Manhattan with the Rockefeller center or the Empire State building. He willed his legs to move, to continue on and move past the building, but he couldn't even though his stomach flooded with bile at the thought of running into Kurt.

Of course, the thought also made his heart pound.

It wasn't until a man in a suit, that Blaine immediately recognized as one of Kurt's guards, stepped out of the building and cleared his throat Blaine's way that Blaine snapped out of his trance.

"You need to go kid."

So Blaine did, rushing off a little bit too quickly, and making his legs burn as he ran part of the way back to campus and his dorm room even though no one had been chasing him.

On Monday, he applied to see one of the counsellors.

"So, I can see you have excellent grades, are set up with a part time job, and all your finances have been taken care of Mr. Anderson, so what can I help you with?" The woman across the desk said as she looked over at Blaine expectantly.

"I.. well I need to figure something out personal."

"You know I'm not that kind of counsellor right?" The woman queried, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"I know… but maybe you could refer me to someone who is?"

She sent him a few blocks over, after making some calls and scheduling an appointment, though seemed skeptical that someone in such good standing at NYADA could possibly have any issues to work out, and the next room he sat in had two cushy chairs sitting across from one another in a room with more books than carpet fibers.

"Well Blaine," The counsellor, another middle aged woman with glasses that also fell down her nose, started. ".. what is it that I can help you with?"

"I need to figure out if I'm crazy."


	21. Chapter 21

_**I must apologize for the delay. I've been feeling under the weather lately and, surprisingly enough, my motivation to write drops when I'm making friends with the porcelain pony. I do want to get this story all up though before I'm gone to Disneyland next week! Expect more sooner!**_

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Blaine didn't get into the dirty details right away with the counsellor. He wanted to feel her out first, make sure she was actually worth the money he was paying her, and more than that, he wanted to ensure she was trustworthy. No matter what anyone said about everything being said in confidence, he didn't know how far that extended. So, in the beginning, Blaine kept it simple. He talked about his family, and how his parents had ultimately wiped their hands clean of him the instant he left to New York. He talked about his unreciprocated crush on Sebastian, and alluded to finding out that Sebastian had only been using him. Blaine talked about the brother he had never really been close with, and how he hadn't spoken to him in years either.

Blaine didn't find himself short of topics without having to discuss Kurt.

At first, the woman didn't say much. She wrote her notes and let Blaine drone on and on. Eventually though, she began to ask questions. The questions were typically inquiries into how different things he described had made him feel, and how he presently felt about them. She wanted to know if he desired reuniting with his parents, his brother, and even Sebastian. In all cases, despite how they had each hurt him in their own ways, he said yes.

Blaine had also begun to form a regular routine out of his visits to the counsellor. He would have his lunch, walk all the way down to Kurt's apartment, look up at it for a few minutes, and then walk all the way back to his counsellor's home, tired and worn out, and ready to vent. The apartment building drew him in, and he obeyed their call, though could never find the courage to cross the threshold into the lobby. For starters he was pretty sure he'd get booted out before he even made it to the door, and he also didn't understand why he wanted to go back in there.

Which was what made him feel the most crazy.

It was about six sessions in when Blaine finally got to the reason behind his sudden need to attend counselling sessions, right when the woman was asking him if he felt like Sebastian was a fluke in terms of people he associated with, or if Sebastian was just one in a long line of users.

"I was kidnapped."

That took her aback, and she readjusted the glasses on her nose as she looked up from her pad of paper. "By Sebastian?"

"No… well… yes… indirectly."

Her attention drawn, she sat herself up higher in her chair and leaned forward. "How so?"

So Blaine told her. A humanitarian trip to Cuba, suddenly being called back to the states, the drugging, the auction, and then… Kurt.

"Why are you telling me this and not a police officer?"

Blaine sighed softly. He was hoping she could answer that question for him instead of posing it right back at him.

"Is it a way to punish Sebastian? By keeping him trapped in service?"

The thought hadn't even occurred to Blaine, and so he quickly shook his head no.

"Are you afraid the authorities might be in league with the perpetrators of this crime?"

That thought had come to him, but now, being faced with the consideration from someone else, it didn't seem like it fit. In fact, whether or not the mafia might have the police in their pocket didn't seem to affect Blaine's state of mind at all. As such, all he could offer was a shrug which made the eyebrows of his therapist lift up.

"Do you think the police are the bad guys?"

Blaine quickly shook his head. Even if the mafia owned the police, he didn't think that would make them bad people. Like anyone else, they were individuals with families and problems of their own, and if faced with the threats Blaine knew the mafia could inflict upon them, it was only reasonable for the officers to want to protect their families and go along with any deals offered to them.

"How do you feel about the man who… owned you?" She made finger quotations at the end, and Blaine inwardly rolled his eyes. It wasn't a figurative owning. He had been owned.

"I'm not sure."

"Well, are the feelings mostly positive or mostly negative?"

Blaine pressed his lips together and looked away, towards one of the bookcases. His eyes strained but he couldn't focus on any of the titles. He knew what the right answer was, but how he felt was an entirely different matter.

"Blaine, are you familiar with Survival Identification Syndrome? It's also called Stockholm Syndrome."

Blaine nodded towards the books. He knew it well enough to have it beating in the back of his head the entire time he had been at Kurt's.

"It's actually quite well researched in terms of history… doctors think it has helped explained the behaviours of concentration camp survivors, members of religious cults, battered wives, incest survivors, abused children, -"

"- I know all about it." Blaine cut in sharply. "I studied a play where it was featured heavily and did some background research on it to get an understanding back in my first year at NYADA."

"So do you think you fit the criteria then?"

Again Blaine shrugged up his shoulders. "He showed me kindness… I was there for months… I mean… there's not a lot of specifics I've read up on the syndrome, and it was always in my head while I was trapped… but…"

"Blaine. This is serious. Stockholm Syndrome can coexist with a number of other things like insomnia, nightmares, irritability, heightened alertness -"

"-I know. I read up on it. I don't have any of that."

"How long has it been since you were trapped?"

"Three months… right before the semester started." Blaine said, thinking back. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it was a lifetime he craved and it made him feel insane that he would want to crave it.

"Hmm…" She scribbled some notes down on her pad and then looked back towards him. "This is why you originally came to see me isn't it?"

Blaine nodded, hugging a throw pillow against his chest. "Yeah…"

"I'm only a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so I can't make diagnoses. However, given the time span and the fact that you were consistently cognizant of the situation, in addition to not having any of the following complications, I don't think you have Stockholm Syndrome."

"So… I'm just crazy…" Blaine said quietly, almost a whisper.

"Why do you think you're crazy Blaine?"

"Because… I miss him. I shouldn't, but I do. It doesn't make any sense."

"Do you think you love him?"

Blaine gulped and looked away. Love? No. That couldn't be right. It certainly made even less sense than missing Kurt.

"Blaine…" the woman uttered after a stretch of silence. "Professionally, I think you need to go to the authorities and continue to seek counselling, maybe even with someone who's more familiar with hostage situations."

"Time's up." Blaine quickly asserted as he glanced up at the clock, standing up quickly despite the disapproving glance of the woman looking up at him over the top of her glasses. "See you next week."

He scampered out of the office as quickly as he could, walking right out of the building and punching the first tree he came across and then yelping as he brought his hand back to his chest and cradled it with the other. He KNEW that was what he should do. He didn't need her to tell him that.

But it wasn't what he wanted to do.

Hands were tucked into the pockets of his warm winter jacket, and Blaine set off to walk to NYADA, bracing himself against the winds blowing up and around him in little cyclones, trapped between the buildings for a moment before spinning up and out before returning once more. How he envied them and their ability to do as they pleased without judgement. No one cared if they were there or not, and unless they got smacked with a wind whipped paper, no one said a thing about their little tornadoes.

He walked until his feet were heavy, and when he had to drag them along the pavement, that's when Blaine realized he had walked too far. In front of him was the same building he had looked at before his appointment. Somehow, lost in the recesses of his mind and self doubt and loathing, Blaine had gone on autopilot and ended up at Kurt's apartment once more.

Maybe it was because his mind was trying to tell him something. Maybe it was that he needed to get over this place… or own it. Whatever the reasoning was, Blaine took in a sharp breath and held it as he pushed his way into the lobby, walking straight forward and expecting to held back by a guard.

But there were no guards.

So he got into the elevator, punching the button and holding onto the bar at the side to keep himself leashed in place lest he lose his nerve and try to run out. Certainly someone would see him on the camera in the top corner of the elevator and send the elevator back down or blockade him at the apartment floor.

But no one did.

Staring at the outside of the door that he had so long stared at the other side of, Blaine began to doubt himself, and his mission - whatever it was. He still hadn't decided why he was doing this and what he intended to come out of it. He just knew he had to do it. No one had stopped him, and maybe that was a sign, so he tried the doorknob and found it was open, stepping inside the apartment like he was going back in time.

Except he had never seen it so disorderly.

Worn clothing was left in different piles around the floor. The kitchen, which he could see from the entrance, was stacked high with dishes and half eaten boxes of take-out, some of which smelled rotten. A tumbleweed of dust and hair floated around his feet, set off by the slight breeze the closing door gave off.

It didn't get better as he moved through the apartment either. Empty bottles of beer and liquor were left everywhere, as were cigarette butts - despite there not being ashtrays to hold them. Papers were scattered over the floor, and when Blaine saw the aquarium, he had to frown. Kurt hadn't been able to convince the college to allow it in his dorm, and now it was cracked, water down to an inch high, and the fish were floating, already showing their small skeletons.

"You… make… me… feel…."

The voice was familiar, insomuch as it was clearly Kurt, but he was singing - something Blaine had never heard him do before. Turning around, Blaine saw him laying back on the couch, a bottle in one hand and a cigarette he was flicking on the floor, where ashes gathered in a pile on the carpet below. His beard had grown in, chestnut brown like his hair, and he sang up to the ceiling, his eyes suggesting that he was drunk or high or something. He hadn't noticed Blaine yet, and so Blaine held back, listening to the lyrics which stirred a small memory inside of him.

"... like I'm livin' a teenaged dreeeeeaaammmm!"

He broke up the song by taking a swig from his bottle, and Blaine's mind blurred back to Dalton Academy blazers, and a Warbler performance in the common room with everyone singing along and dancing. He was at his finest then. Sebastian hadn't invaded his life yet, and he was rebuilding the confidence he had lost after the Sadie Hawkins dance at his previous school. He was on top at Dalton then. That was the time in his life that cemented his desire to be on stage.

Blaine was broken out of his memory by a hiccup, and then some humming before Kurt started in on another verse.

"I finally found you! My missing puzzle piece!"

His words were slurred, and another hiccup and another sip from the bottle stopped him from continuing. It was then, as Blaine looked at the face of the broken man laying down, that he saw a flash from his memory. A rounder face, smooth skin, hair that lay flat instead of coiffed up…

"Nooooo regrets… jus' love…."

He couldn't help the gasp that escaped from his mouth as he set that boy's face on top of Kurt's, and it was that gasp that alerted the drunken man to his presence, looking over with water rimmed eyes, that only seemed to be partially aware as to the world he was in.

"... somethin' somethin'... young forever…."

"You were there!" Blaine yelled, coming up the few steps to Kurt, who didn't react much to Blaine's presence except to squint as if he were trying to focus. "You were there! At Dalton!"

Kurt didn't answer, at least not with anything vocalized. Instead he just stared up at Blaine as if he were trying to decide if Blaine was real or just a dream. Close up, Blaine could see the uncharacteristic stains on Kurt's shirt, which was a plain, almost white T-shirt of all things - something he didn't even know Kurt owned until it clicked with him that the shirt was one of the ones he owned when he had been with Kurt.

"Why didn't you tell me?! Have you been stalking me this whole time?!"

Tears involuntarily blossomed in Kurt's eyes, trailing off to each side of his face and leaving streaks over the streaks that already existed in dried form. He appeared to have decided Blaine was real as he murmured "You weren't supposed to see me… no one did…"

Blaine had though. He had seen Kurt, and in him the same sadness and fear that Blaine had before he had come to Dalton. Now too, he saw that same sadness and fear, and saw how the years with it had cemented it into place within Kurt. This wasn't a man, but a boy that had never gotten a chance to grow up - always surviving instead. Surviving death after death, and the pain of being different. If Blaine had Stockholm Syndrome, it was because he felt for Kurt. Felt the way his heart ached, and ached with him.

"Did you get me because of that?"

"... 'cause of *hiccup* what?"

"Because of Dalton?"

Kurt nodded sadly, eyes lowering down to his chest like a sad little kid who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The questions were answered. Why Kurt had bought him when he clearly hadn't known what he wanted to do with Blaine. Why he had been taken care of so well. Why he had been cherished. Kurt had been a part of glee club, and he had spied on the Warblers… spied on Blaine. Blaine wasn't sure of the exact timing, but he was pretty sure Kurt's died not long after that performance. His life had gone to hell in one big rush, and, before Blaine had time to think about it, he was kneeling down, pressing his lips to Kurt's alcohol stained ones, and then lifting his head as he gasped for air from the smoky, pungent taste.

"Let me take care of you."


	22. Chapter 22

_**So the last few chapters will be posted from my ipad, which means... who knows what. It does mean that I won't be able to alert you to updates on tumblr though since doing anything but a basic text post on tumblr from my ipad requires several more degrees than I have.**_

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When Kurt awoke, it was to a thumping in his head. It wasn't surprising though as it had been a long time since he had woken up without a headache, and the start to his days were now measured in terms of how severe the pulsing in his temples was. Today, it was definitely starting off poorly.

He didn't remember getting himself into bed the night before, but that wasn't anything new considering how much he had been imbibing lately. What was new was that when he reached blindly over to his bedside table that he didn't rake his hand through cigarette butts and dirty dishes. He also didn't knock over the bottle of pills he wanted before finding them. Instead, he discovered a fresh glass of water, with cool water still condescending on the outside, along with two little pills beside it, already ready for him to take.

Kurt accepted the gift, assuming it might have been from himself in a drunken state - for he had found much more disconcerting presents from himself, including a number of selfies on his phone where he had been doing naked yoga by the looks of things, and downed the pills with the aid of the water as he sat himself up in bed. That was when he noticed his bedside table wasn't the only thing that had remedied in terms of its mess during his drunken night.

There were no longer rumpled piles of clothing on the floor, and the carpet was not only visible again, but vacuumed - free of the ashes and bits of dried food he had gotten used to stepping on. His closet was open, exposing the freshly laundered clothes to him, hanging up neatly and ironed. Was it possible that he rehired his maid during his stupor?

Echoes of memories invaded his mind, thoughts of the meeting between himself and Blaine from a lifetime ago. Yet the memory seemed a little off. Blaine wasn't looking straight at him, he was hovering over him… and he wasn't singing, but speaking.

Kurt shook his head, wincing at the way his brain seemed to slam against the walls of his skull as he did so. Ever since he had given Blaine up, this was how his mind repaid him. It was why he pulled away from the five families, why he anonymously alerted the authorities to different criminal activities he knew about, and why he had his guards and chauffeur reassigned to a family that could better use them. His mom and dad might hate him for what he had become, wherever they were, but if he had the chance to reform, he wanted to do it while someone else he cared about lived, even if Blaine never heard about it or cared. It was Blaine's insistent memory in his mind that was acting like the angel on his shoulder he never seemed to have before, and a damned demanding one as well.

Kurt's sense of smell kicked in then. Something smelled good, and Kurt perked up as he heard a clattering coming from the kitchen. He collected his bathrobe from the hook on the back of the door, also freshly washed and smelling clean for the first time in months, and tugged it over himself as he lumbered out of the room and downstairs. It wasn't just the bedroom that had been cleaned; the rest of the apartment had also been vacuumed, wiped down, and otherwise scrubbed. The aquarium, that had cracked when he had tried to figure out how to change the water when it got murky, was now missing from its place in the living room, leaving behind an indent in the carpet where it had weighed it down. There were no longer spots and smudges on the television. The papers that had been scattered over the floor and left there for weeks had disappeared from sight. It was like Kurt hadn't even began his months of meltdown.

When Kurt got to the kitchen, he stopped and held his breath because Blaine was there, frying eggs and bacon in an equally cleaned kitchen. This had to be a dream. Or maybe Kurt was dead from alcohol poisoning and this was what heaven was. Either way, he didn't know how to make himself move forward or speak, so he remained glued to the spot, eyes wide and set on Blaine who offered him a most unsettling smile when he looked up and noticed him.

"I'll have breakfast ready in just a few minutes if you want to sit at the table."

"You're here." Kurt stammered, as if it wasn't already obvious by what he saw in front of him.

"Yeah… go sit. We'll talk after."

Kurt nodded obediently, creeping over to the table by the window, though never removing his eyes from Blaine just in case he disappeared if Kurt did look away. It felt odd to sit at the table without a cigarette rolling between his fingers, and the thought of his smoking addiction made his lungs burn up with desire - though it seemed that all his ashtrays were missing or put away.

The plate set before him was full to the edges of bacon, eggs, toast, and fruit - things Kurt knew he didn't have in his fridge so they must have been picked up. Kurt waited until Blaine loaded up a plate of his own and sat across from him before taking small forkfuls and eating quietly. There were so many things he wanted to ask Blaine, chiefly why he was there, but Kurt let him eat, and inwardly reveled in how good real homemade food felt on his taste buds and in his stomach.

After taking a few bites, Blaine looked up at him with those caramel sweet eyes. "Where are your guards?"

"Reassigned." Kurt admitted. "I didn't need them anymore."

"Even after that gunfight and taking money out of their slave business?"

Kurt looked down at the fried egg, poking at the yolk for a moment as he queried, "Yeah.. that was in the paper huh?"

"Yes."

"I pulled my financial backing from everything actually… that was just the only thing to hit the newsstands."

Blaine's fork tapped against his plate a few times, and then his voice became as demanding as it was when Kurt imagined Blaine in his head. "Are you crazy? You know the people you work with! Are you trying to get killed?!"

Kurt didn't answer, just continued to poke at his egg, and it was when he heard Blaine suck back a breath and smack a palm down on the table that he realized Blaine got it.

"You are crazy! Suicidal at least!"

"I would have thought it would have made you happy that I'm not off financing crooks and murderers anymore." Kurt admitted, wondering why his mental image of Blaine wasn't syncing up with the real one before him.

"I… am… I just…." Blaine set his fork down, looking steadily at Kurt in such a way that Kurt felt his skin crawl. "... it would be one thing if you did it and kept your guards… but letting them go Kurt…"

"It's the only way I can own up for my part in this business."

"Why not just leave? Tell them you're done? Pay out what you need to in order to be free?"

Kurt shook his head, looking up to meet Blaine's eyes. "I told you, there is no getting out of this business unless it's in a coffin."

"... and you were alright with that?!" Blaine stood up, breakfast forgotten as he leaned over the table to scold Kurt. "You have no doubt pissed off the most dangerous men in this city and sent your guards away. You want that casket!"

Kurt shrugged, looking away again under Blaine's disapproving glance. Until this morning, when Kurt thought he'd never see Blaine again, he had decided that there was nothing left worth living for anyhow - and letting the mob come and get him in retaliation seemed as good a death as any.

"You're an idiot - you know that?"

To that, Kurt couldn't help but let out a small chuckle, and that seemed to unnerve Blaine who couldn't seem to come up with a response to the laughter. "Yeah… guess I am."

"Why didn't you tell me you knew me from Dalton in the beginning?"

Kurt snapped his head back to Blaine, eyes going wide with surprise as memories from the night before slid into his eyes. He had been singing that damned song again, and Blaine had come in… carried him upstairs… and tucked him in bed. Blaine had remembered.

"Because… you didn't remember when I bought you, so I didn't think I was important enough to remember and didn't want to force it on you."

"You're an idiot."

Blaine sat himself back down and proceeded to finish off his breakfast, and Kurt, following his lead, did the same. The plates were taken away by Blaine to be washed in the sink, and as Kurt fidgeted with his fingers, Blaine spoke up.

"I threw away all your cigarettes."

It was like a jolt to his head, and Kurt gawked for a moment before Blaine elaborated.

"That stuff'll kill you, and I hate the smell of it and the taste of it on you."

The fact that the cigarettes would lead to other health concerns seemed laughable considering what they had just spoken about, but the fact that Blaine seemed to be subtly noting that he had gotten rid of Kurt's little stress relief sticks for his own benefit drew Kurt's curiosity… and worry.

"You can't stay with me Blaine. It's dangerous."

"I'm not leaving either. Hire your damned guards back if you're so worried."

"They wouldn't be able to do much anyhow against a whole crew… and I didn't want their families to have to mourn them."

Blaine glanced over, hands deep in the sink where he was washing the grease off the plates. "There had to be another way then. The police?"

"Most are good… but if any that aren't get a whiff of any rats, that'll be it."

"Witness protection?"

"Only good so long as you never ever run into anyone who knows anyone. I've heard so many stories about people being found by accident…"

Blaine sighed, lifting his hands out of the water and shaking the suds off before grabbing a towel to wipe his hand up and approach Kurt. Each arm of the chair was grabbed onto by one of Blaine's hands, so he was leaning forwards, face to face with Kurt who was suddenly bombarded by the smell of Blaine once more, enough to want to wrap his arms around him and lose himself forever in that man. "We'll find a way… and you're important enough to remember… I was just a moron for forgetting."

Kurt blinked, and then blinked again, staring at Blaine as if he were some kind of god, there to bless him with everything he could ever want. His heart stopped, skipped, and then raced around his chest.

"I love you Kurt."

Just like that, it was as if his chest could not contain his heart any longer as it went from running to exploding, and before he could even really process the enormity of Blaine's words, his lips were enveloped in a kiss with lips still greasy from bacon, but not flavorful enough to cover up the warm, vanilla taste of Blaine.

Hands fumbled then, on both their parts, as Kurt went to unbutton Blaine's shirt and Blaine went to peel away Kurt's robe - an easier task than the former. Yet it was Kurt that seemed to get Blaine's shirt off before Blaine had fully gotten rid of Kurt's robe, since he was so focused on trying to make Kurt lose his mind by sucking a path down from Kurt's lips, to his earlobe, and then down to his collarbone. That was where Kurt could no longer multitask, and instead ended up leaning back in the chair moaning loud and lewdly as Blaine left marks on his skin and stroked his erection with a free hand.

"I'm going to take care of you." were the words whispered up to Kurt when Blaine lifted his lips to breath, and Kurt could only shudder and whimper in response as he forgot how to speak. If he had been able to vocalize, his words would have been along the lines of _Yes, Yes, Please, Please, Make me yours._

They took a moment to pull away from one another so Kurt could stand and together, arms around one another, they could back themselves through the apartment, up the stairs, and to the bedroom where Blaine gently pushed Kurt back against the bed, knees catching and forcing him onto his back. He crawled backwards there, admiring Blaine's body, which only seemed to get more beautiful every time Kurt looked at him, as Blaine took off the rest of his clothing and went to fetch the lubricant from the bedside table.

The sound of the cap being popped off sent a shiver up Kurt's spine. It had been so long since he had bottomed, and the few time he had done it was enough to convince him it wasn't worth it. Yet, here he was, eager to take Blaine, wanting it even, so that when Blaine pressed a lubed up finger against the hard ring of muscle between Kurt's cheeks, Kurt found himself letting out a long breath to relax his body and make the push of the finger easier for him to take.

It didn't make it burn less, but Blaine was so careful, and Kurt recalled how much he had tried to make things feel good for Blaine in the past, and knew that, at least in this case, karma might be kind to him. Kurt stretched out his legs, and with Blaine working one, then two, fingers in and out of Kurt, pain gave way to pleasure, and Kurt squirmed and gasped for more without him ever remembering the words filtering through his brain.

It was the telltale sound of a condom wrapper being torn that gave Kurt pause next, and he reached out to grab Blaine's hand and shake his head at him as he fumbled with the little piece of rubber.

"Have you been with anyone else?"

Blaine shook his head, and got the meaning, for better or worse, and threw the package to the side as he lubed himself up and butted the head of his cock against Kurt's readied hole. Kurt wanted everything from Blaine, he wanted to feel his flesh against his own, inside and out, and even if Blaine wasn't telling the truth (and he didn't think Blaine would lie) Kurt didn't care. If there was retaliation, he wouldn't have to worry about any diseases anyhow.

Not as long as Kurt was, but definitely more girthy, Blaine spread Kurt open to the point where Kurt had to grit his teeth down, waiting for the fire inside him to pass as he told his body to go lax and accept the gift he never thought he'd ever get. He was grateful for being, unintentionally, a decent teacher as far showing Blaine how to prep someone well, because Kurt knew the small ache he felt now was nothing compared to the pain he felt the last times he bottomed for less patient, less caring men.

It pass quickly enough too. Blaine took care in moving slowly, asking Kurt if he was alright, and tenderly stroking over Kurt's cock to redirect some of the pain to pleasure. Within minutes Kurt was sweating with a heat building in his belly, and begging Blaine to ride him harder and faster, each beat of his dick inside of Kurt hitting that sweet spot that sent chills down his arms and made him lose all ability to control the crude words spewing out of his mouth.

He came before Blaine, spraying both their chests with white pearls that never seemed to end, and Blaine asked, so sweetly, what he wanted Kurt to do - to which Kurt growled something along the lines of "fill me up" but with more cursing and more allusions to god. Blaine bucked his hips a few more times after getting confirmation, and then bottomed out and stilled inside of Kurt. Inside Kurt could feel more heat, though lost in the aftershocks of his own orgasm, didn't notice much more beyond the stars inside his eyelids and the way his toes felt like they were buzzing.

Blaine cleaned up afterwards, although Kurt had whined for Blaine to stay within him and had cringed when their bodies separated, leaving him gaping and exposed, dripping out a filthy mess he would never admit that he was proud of.

Then, as so often he had done in the past, Blaine crawled into the bed beside Kurt and wound him up in his arms after pulling the blanket up, and Kurt let himself be held. He didn't need to fight or protect or dominate. Kurt just needed to nuzzle his head in against Blaine's chest and let himself enjoy this moment.

Because he didn't know how many he would have left like it.


	23. Chapter 23

_**I apologize. I totally thought I would be able to write on my trip and post from my iPad… but… Disneyland. It is an all consuming force of magical awesomeness that demands your full attention. I am totally not sorry.**_

* * *

It took a special person to get tangled up in sheets such that they had to fight to free themselves, but Blaine was one of those people, and as much as he wanted to linger in bed and sleep in, he knew he had to get out and catch the train to school. School wasn't going to stop on account of him desiring more snuggle time, nor would his cats forgive him if he was late in feeding them before classes started. He could have just brought them back to Kurt's apartment, but he had already been struggling with having Kurt let him in and didn't want to have to fight to have the cats there as well.

After Thanksgiving break, Blaine had left Kurt's apartment in order to ensure his feline pets were still alive and attend classes, only to find that when he came back that night that Kurt had locked him out, yelling at him from inside the door that he needed to forget about him, that it wasn't safe for Blaine to be there, and that he couldn't risk Blaine getting hurt.

It took Blaine sitting outside Kurt's door for an hour to convince Kurt that Blaine wasn't going anywhere and that if the bad guys were coming, they'd have to deal with Blaine before they ever got to Kurt anyhow.

Kurt had gone so far as to tell the doorman not to allow Blaine in, but Blaine had smooth talked his way in, and Kurt had finally acquiesced that Blaine was as stubborn as he was, and, perhaps, just as stupid.

It wasn't that Blaine had a death wish though that kept him coming to Kurt's each night, it was that he felt drawn to Kurt in a way he couldn't explain, nor did he want to. He finally accepted what his heart already knew, and that was that he, more than anything, wanted to be with this man that all sense and logic dictated he shouldn't want to be with. Blaine was okay with fighting for whatever it was they had, and made sure Kurt knew it.

It wasn't like Kurt was as tough as he had made out either, because each time Blaine made his way into the apartment, regardless of how Kurt had tried to keep him out, it was Kurt who melted into Blaine's arms. The power dynamic between them had changed. It was Blaine who held Kurt, who took care of him, and who left the apartment during the day now. He was sure that Kurt didn't even leave to go up to his office, and while that was good on account of Kurt not having any more cigarettes around to smoke, Blaine knew how trapped he felt in that place and worried that Kurt felt the same. What was more was that Kurt had trapped himself in this situation, out of fear, and Blaine didn't know how to remedy that.

"If they were going to come after you… don't you think they would have already?" Blaine asked of Kurt one evening after they laid in their shared sweat, Kurt's head pressed against Blaine's chest.

"It's not like the movies… they wait to see if what you've done has had a purpose. For all they know I might have gone out of country to do some kind of business that might explain my change in interest - and that change might benefit them somehow. They might also assume that I caught wind of the authorities looking into my business and had to cool it for awhile. These are things that are completely forgivable and understandable. It's when they realize that I'm trying to pull out of the game that they'll get angry…."

"You've handled all their cash… surely you've got something to hold over them…"

Kurt peered up at Blaine then, through his almost blonde lashes that sometimes disappeared in the right light. "I do… I have plenty… but there's a fine line between leverage and liability…"

The way Kurt spoke made Blaine worried that what they had was temporary. A waiting game, like terminal cancer that would sneak up and take away all the love they had and replace it with pain and anguish. But it wasn't an incurable disease, and Kurt's fatalism just frustrated Blaine. There needed to be a way out of the mess he was in, and he needed to want to fight for it.

Which was why Blaine kept coming, kept taking care of Kurt - even when his depression was maddening. At one point Kurt put a glass in the microwave and it exploded in there, leaving little shards everywhere that Kurt, absent of self-preservation, tried to pick up with his fingers until he was riddled with cuts that Blaine had to bandage.

"It said right on it - not microwave safe. You'd think with all the work you've done that you would be a little more literate and mindful…" Blaine scolded as he washed and wrapped each finger, stopping to gawk at Kurt when the other man started laughing. "What on earth is so funny?"

"It's just…" Kurt started, giggling again and needing to take a deep breath to stop his laughter in order to explain himself. "... my dad put a metal dish in the microwave and it caught fire once…. and I gave him trouble for it too… I always wanted to be like my dad…."

The chuckles gave way to a solemn frown, and Kurt looked away. Blaine was sure he was hiding a tear or two in doing so, and when he finished bandaging Kurt's fingers made sure to kiss his hands over tenderly. "Your dad would be proud of what you're doing…"

"You never knew my dad…" Kurt whispered softly, head still turned.

"I know you though, and I know that if you wanted to be like him, then he would be the kind of man that would think that doing the right thing isn't always doing the easy thing."

It was the first of many difficult discussions. Kurt talked about his parents, and the heartbreak of losing them one after the other. Blaine talked about how indifferent his parents had been towards him, first with coming out of the closet and then pursuing a career in the arts. They mused about what they wanted out of life when they were young, and how it compared now. At least Blaine did anyhow. Kurt never spoke about the future in the present.

There was talk of the bullying they had both experienced, and notes compared about how Blaine's bullying had resolved itself after he had been beaten and transferred to Dalton and how Kurt's abuse continued until he had come to New York and toughened up such that no one dared to mess with a boy that had mafia connections.

Kurt had asked him about Cooper, and why his parents had been okay with Cooper running off to pursue an acting degree, to which Blaine had to painfully admit that "It was one thing to have a kid in the arts, it was another to have one that was gay and in the arts…"

Through it all, no one knocked on their door, and Blaine never saw anything suspicious when he came to Kurt's or left there each day. It was enough to build up his sense of security if Kurt hadn't been there to remind him to watch his back.

At one point, Kurt had even tried to hand a gun to Blaine, insisting that he might need it.

"Not only am I not comfortable with having one of those, I don't know how to shoot them." Blaine had admitted, refusing the firearm.

"I can teach you."

"I won't be taught."

It was the end of that conversation, although Blaine knew that Kurt kept a gun tucked in between the mattress and boxspring on his side of the bed.

Weekends were the best. It was when Blaine got to sleep in, cuddled against Kurt. He had bribed his resident advisor to look in on his cats and feed them over the weekends so he wouldn't have to leave the apartment aside from play practices and any tutoring he couldn't schedule during the weekdays. Weekends were the best opportunities to build Kurt up, to show him how much he mattered to Blaine, and they were when Blaine saw the glimmer of hope in Kurt's eyes for something more than the present.

Weekends were when Blaine proposed ideas like:

"We could go visit the gravesites of your parents together."  
"It would be nice to see a show together."  
"Maybe we could go on a vacation over Christmas."  
and  
"I read about a cruise that does a different Broadway play each evening onboard."

Each suggestion was responded to with silence, but the more Blaine spoke about future plans and ideas, the more he saw the life grow in Kurt's eyes. So he kept it up, dreaming up future plans for both aloud until, at last, he earned a little nod from Kurt about how it would be fun to go to Disneyland together.

The nod was worth all the effort.

Their sexual roles had also switched since they met, and now Kurt was consistently the bottom, letting Blaine take care of him and lead them both through, and while Blaine was alright with the development, he inwardly did a cartwheel when Kurt, after a month of passive lovemaking, rolled them over so that he was bouncing on top of Blaine - taking care of himself and Blaine at once.

Mornings were also a struggle. Blaine often had to untangle himself not only from the sheets, but from Kurt's needy arms, in order to leave in a timely manner, and while Blaine couldn't be sure of it, he was convinced that Kurt didn't leave the bed until the afternoon. So the first time Blaine woke up without Kurt in bed, he first panicked, and then he grinned in absolute joy as he realized it was Kurt who was up before him and in the shower.

Those were the little things that let Blaine knew that Kurt was getting better, or at least developing, in his own way and despite Kurt's assurance that there would be retaliation, Blaine never saw any suggestion that there would be any. If anything, the more time went on, the more he was sure that Kurt was overdramatizing things and that everything would be alright.

Until, that morning when he worked on untangling himself from the sheets, that the door banged open and a barrage of men with guns stormed into the apartment just as Kurt was getting out of the shower.

"It's time for answers Hummel."


	24. Chapter 24

There wasn't a lot of time to Kurt to transition from happy-domestic Kurt to serious-business Kurt, but somehow he managed it, tying his robe extra tight around his waist as he faced the home invaders with a scowl, mentally counting up the number of families being represented in their numbers (three) as he stepped forward to ensure he was between the men and Blaine, whose wide eyes and the iron grip he had on the sheets hiding his body gave away his panic.

"Allow me and my boyfriend to get dressed and we will meet upstairs, in my office, to discuss matters."

The guy in the lead, a man Kurt knew as one of the boss's right hand man nodded his way, closing the door behind him to give Kurt and Blaine their privacy, though Kurt knew quite well that they would be waiting outside the door to escort him up.

Blaine didn't know that though, hissing over towards Kurt, "What are we going to do?!"

Kurt put a finger up to his lips and Blaine snapped his mouth shut as he got the message, eyes communicating to Kurt that he was, at the very least, not okay with what was happening.

"You go have a quick shower while I dress and pick an outfit out for you. Don't be long."

Blaine hesitated, taking in a shaky breath before complying, sheets wrapped around his body awkwardly as he ambled into the ensuite bathroom, leaving Kurt to dress, do his hair, and mentally plan out what he was going to do.

He certainly wasn't going to lay down and accept death. That was certain. His life didn't matter, but Blaine was there, and Kurt knew the men outside of that door weren't just going to let Blaine go. Whatever Kurt did he needed to ensure Blaine was taken care of, that he was safe, and that no one would dare touch him. That was the goal.

He picked suits for himself and Blaine that were dark, simple, and well tailored. It was important in dealings with the mob that an image was maintained, one of certainly and non-negotiation. When Blaine finished in the shower, Kurt was the one to do his hair, styling it down so his curls weren't lose and shaving the beard off his face. If Kurt didn't know that Blaine was from mixed Filipino and Irish ancestry, Kurt would have sworn he could pass as Italian - even looking like a brother to some of the made men Kurt had worked with in the past.

Some of those men were dead now. Made men didn't have a long life expectancy. If the bullets didn't get you, the lifestyle eventually would. The disregard for personal health had morphed many otherwise healthy young men into fat, bloated, drunks, riddled with diseases of the heart, liver, and pancreas, along with regular bouts of sexually transmitted infections.

"You look good… dashing even." Kurt admitted to Blaine when the man tugged on his cuffs, all dressed up as if Kurt was taking him out on a date instead of to the unscheduled meeting he didn't want Blaine to have to be a part of.

"You always look good…" Blaine admitted, albeit weakly. Kurt knew he was trying to be tough, but the simple fact was that Blaine hadn't had years of experience dealing with the mob like Kurt had, and the trembling he was trying to manage snuck out every now and then such that Kurt had to bind his arms around Blaine in a solid hug, holding him closely until Blaine melted against him as Kurt whispered.

"I won't let anything happen to you."

When he pulled back, Blaine was more solid, but still looked at Kurt with those worried, questioning eyes. It was then that Kurt pulled his revolver out from between the mattress and boxspring of the bed and pushed it into Blaine's hands, who prompted pushed it back into Kurt's.

"I don't know how." He whispered.

"They don't know that."

"Besides…" Blaine continued to whisper, pulling his hands away when Kurt tried to put the gun back into them. "... I can't pull the trigger… I can't."

Kurt sighed and tucked the gun into the back of his belt, under his jacket. It was useless to spend time arguing with Blaine on the matter when Blaine was probably right. Even though Kurt had never directly shot anyone, he still knew how to use a gun, and he knew he would if he had to upstairs.

They were escorted by a circle of men up to Kurt's office in silence. Kurt spent the walk recalling details about the families being represented by the men there, and also paying attention to where each of the men had guns holstered. He wanted to make sure he had as much information as he could going in.

The bosses were waiting for him, sitting in the couches in his office and casually smoking cigars as they drank alcohol from his office bar. His office was huge, and the whole back wall behind his desk was panelled in windows that overlooked the city. He loved that view, almost as much as he loved looking at Blaine.

"I see you gentlemen have made yourself comfortable." Kurt noted, striding to his desk and taking a seat in the leather upholstered chair where he flipped his laptop open and let it load up. Blaine followed after him, standing to his side and doing his best to hide his nerves.

"I want to know why my finances have been transferred to some mutt at Wall Street." One of the bosses, Anthony, snapped towards Kurt.

"Ah, right to the point then." Kurt mused, leaning back in his chair and looking directly to the man in question. "I assure you, Simon is quite trustworthy and will ensure your money is well taken care of."

"That's not the point." Anthony snapped, standing up with such ferocity that the glass he held spilled over the edge with his drink. "You don't get to decide who takes care of my cash. I do! I chose you. You said it was good with you!"

"It was, when I was in business. Regrettably, I've decided to retire."

This was the point when the nostrils on all the bosses flared up, and Kurt tensed up just a little, just in case he needed to react quickly. He knew that announcement was not what they wanted to hear, and knew he had to choose his words very carefully from there.

"You don't get to retire any more than I do!" Another boss, Silvio, growled to him.

"I'm not a made man though Silvio. I'm not Italian and can't be." Kurt asserted with a gentle tone.

"So what? You're a friend of the families. We don't judge you for it, not even your…" Paulie, the third boss, looked towards Blaine as he said it, "... sodomistic ways. Jus' like I don't begrudge the Jew that I get to do my tailoring or the Chink I got to do my laundry."

"But if they moved or stopped their businesses would you go after them?" Kurt asked, still keeping his voice low as they raised theirs.

"No! But they're only dealing with my clothing. You, you're dealin' with my money. That ain't no triflin' matter boy." Paulie quipped, earning a nod from the other two men.

Kurt looked between them, all wearing sour faces. "Can I ask why only three of you are here?"

"Cause' a' you one of the families is in chaos since a bunch of the high rankers were killed, and Badry, who you got to do the dirty work, seems okay with you leavin' us high n' dry." Anthony explained.

To that, Kurt nodded thoughtfully. He had at least one ally then, not that it would help him now. "So tell me what you'd like me to do for you then."

"Get back in business or get the treatment… if you know what I mean." Silvio uttered, drawing a line over his neck with a finger just in case Kurt was completely inept.

"I'm not interested in either, and neither should any of you."

"Eh? And why's that?"

Kurt gestured towards his screen. "I trust you've brought someone who knows how to read the books."

There was a nod from the threesome, and a dainty looking little guy in a suit and pushed-up-the-nose glasses walked up to Kurt's desk where Kurt, refusing to give up his seat, turned the computer towards him. "I'm no longer in a position to do business since I have no money to serve as capital in any investments, nor any money to loan out."

The three family bosses furrowed their brows and turned their attention onto their lackey to confirm what Kurt had said, who, after scrolling through Kurt's records and data, nodded to the bosses, "It's true. He transferred all his accounts to another party after paying off all debts and prepaying bills… he's essentially broke and has no money to his name."

"The fuck?!" Paulie snapped, storming up to the desk and smacking his palms down on them to glower at Kurt, who could smell the alcohol wafting off the man's breath. "So you just have a death wish then eh?"

"Sir…?" The little man looking at the screen piped up, gulping as Paulie looked at him.

Through it all, Kurt had stayed firm, not responding to the way the man tried to intimidate him or make him quaver. He purposely didn't look at Blaine, knowing full well his resolve would be weakened if he did. He had to play this right.

"Uh… well.. Mr. Hummel here also has a lot of information on each of you in a file on here…."

Paulie's enormous bushy eyebrows damn near lifted off his forehead, "Like what kinda information?"

"Details about how much you boys spend on your mistresses, vacations with prostitutes that you tell your wives and families are business meetings, money spent on deals meant to undermine other families -"

"The fuck you get that information creep?!" Anthony yelled, joining Paulie at the desk and shaking his fist Kurt's way.

"You were the ones that entrusted your money to me. The details on how you spent it came along with it." Kurt shrugged apologetically - though he was anything but.

"So delete it!" Silvio snapped at the man before the computer.

"I wouldn't." Kurt advised. "It's encrypted. If a deletion is attempted, it gets sent out automatically to all mafia contacts I have, including families, as well as the press."

The papers and pens Kurt had on his desk bounced up into the air as Paulie's fist hit the table. "This is fucking blackmail!"

"I should also note that if I don't make regular check-in's with my lawyer that the information will also be released as he has a copy." Kurt bluffed. It was the first thing he said that wasn't quite true, but also the thing that might ensure his survival.

"Give us his name!" Anthony demanded.

Kurt shook his head. "As I said, Simon is very reliable, and so long as I am alive and breathing and happy, I am too."

The bosses pulled back a few steps, making a small triangle as they spoke in hushes, and Kurt could hear just how heavy and quick Blaine's breaths were coming from beside him. If they made it through the day, he intended to hold Blaine close.

"No one crosses the families Hummel." Anthony said with a snarl as he pulled away from the group.

Kurt interlaced his fingers and set his elbows on the desk as he leaned forward. "I'm not crossing anyone. I just want to retire in peace. Wouldn't you if you had the opportunity?"

Anthony didn't respond, but did scowl Kurt's way before looking back at his colleagues, still in heated debate, speaking rapidly over one another with words that were mostly curses. By the sounds of things, they weren't coming to any conclusion over what to do, just placing blame on one another and accusing each other of undermining them.

How they managed to get along at all long enough to come to his home in a group was beyond Kurt.

"Can he get that money back Chris?" Paulie asked of the little man they had working for them, breaking out of the circle for just a moment.

The man shook his head, "No. It's irreversible and split between several accounts under federal watch…."

That prompted a new line of expletives from Paulie as he turned back to Anthony and Silvio, whose tones were becoming less raised and more hushed.

Finally, the outcome. It was Silvio who was somehow elected between the trio to step up to Kurt, hands outstretched and face dull, "You know that people live and die by this business…"

"I know." Kurt admitted, holding his breath as he said it.

"... and you know people look to us to set examples so that we don't end up looking like pansies that can be crossed…"

Kurt nodded, stiffening up and making a mental assessment: How quickly could he pull his gun if they pulled theirs?

"Now I really don't like that you have all this supposed information on us, and would be willing to use it against us in the event of your untimely demise. Here I thought you and I were friends."

Kurt kept his professional wit about him as he looked to Silvio, summoning as much sincerity as he could. "I would have liked that, but, business first, then pleasure… and for too long there has been no pleasure in my life."

"Eh… I get that… I truly do." Silvio shrugged up his shoulders. "Still… woulda' been nice you coming to talk about wanting to retire directly to us instead of all this shady underhanded nonsense.. y'know what I mean?"

"I apologize for the perceived deception. My plans were not well thought ahead at the time I made them, and now that I have committed to them, I can't go back on them."

Silvio nodded a bit, his eyes, as they always had been, thoughtful. "Apparently that's the case. So, seeing as you are a trustworthy fellow, we're thinking we let you off the hook… but it's going to hurt our street cred if it seems that easy…. y'know?"

Kurt breathed out finally in relief, his head buzzing from the momentary lack of oxygen he afforded it. "I understand… and because I wouldn't want your businesses to suffer, I will inform any that inquire that it was you that let me go because Simon was a better financial advisor. Besides… they'll see me without any money left to my name and assume it was all of you that ruined me. Most men would rather be dead than penniless."

They all nodded at that, though Paulie was still making fists at his side, and made sure that Kurt knew "But if you try an' use that information against us or tell anyone anything else, I will personally track you down, cut off your balls and shove them down your boyfriend's throat for him to choke on. Got it?"

Kurt nodded, "Got it."


	25. Chapter 25

The instant the door slammed behind the men that had ensured Blaine's stomach was so bunched in knots that he wouldn't be ever able to untie it, Blaine's knees fell against one another and his palms dropped down to the desk to brace himself. Somehow Kurt had managed to stop those guys from killing them both, though the one guy's parting line did suggest something about Blaine choking on Kurt's decapitated testicles should Kurt ever cross them. It seemed nothing short of a miracle given what Blaine knew about the mafia, what Kurt had alluded to and anticipated, and the disregard for human life those men seemed to have in the way they had casually suggested killing them.

Kurt was on his feet in a split second, his chair wheeling back on it's own as he shot out of it to help support Blaine. It had taken all the will within Blaine not to whimper, or plead, or sweat profusely when everyone had been speaking around him. How Kurt managed to deal with people like that for so long was beyond Blaine. He just felt lucky he hadn't wet himself.

"Are you alright?" Kurt whispered, one of his arms wrapped around Blaine's waist and another ready to catch him if his legs turned to complete jelly.

Blaine just nodded in reply, though he really didn't feel alright. He was well aware that Kurt's planning and ability to defuse the situation was the reason he was still there, and that if he had had to fend for himself against those brutes - he'd be attracting flies in the trunk of a car by now.

"Hey…" Kurt cooed softly, bringing his free hand up to cup Blaine's chin and direct it towards his own face. "It's okay. You're safe."

"They could have killed us." Blaine said in a gasp, his upper teeth grazing over his lip, threatening to bite down on it in an old nervous habit from his childhood that only just then decided to make a comeback.

"We're alive. You're okay. I wouldn't let them hurt you."

"And if it was just you they caught…?"

Kurt shrugged a little, and the sourness in Blaine's stomach turned to fire.

"You would have let them kill you wouldn't you? You wouldn't even have fought-"

"No… I mean. I might have." Kurt interrupted. "Back after I first let you go… but you came back… and you kept coming back… I would have fought to stay alive for that."

Blaine's nose wrinkled up as he considered Kurt's words, brow furrowing along with it. Whether Kurt was lying now for his benefit or not didn't matter since the outcome was the same. "Why would you give away all your money though? That's something people do when they think they're going to die."

"Because I did think I was… and accepted it… You saw me Blaine, at my worst, when I accepted it."

"But now you have nothing."

A sideways smile, and a tilted head told Blaine he was missing something as Kurt regarded him with twinkling eyes. "No."

"Sappy shit aside about having me and all that - you still don't have anything else to your name."

Kurt laughed. A real, raucous laugh and Blaine found himself being squeezed tightly against Kurt as he was pulled in against him. "Okay.. sappy stuff aside it's true… I don't have any more money left in my accounts. I transferred them all to several accounts in your name to be released at different points. However I do have my -"

"What?"

"Well each year there will be a new deposit from a separate account that goes into your main account and -"

"Kurt." Blaine stammered, shaking his head. "You gave all your money to me?"

Blue eyes rolled before him. "Yeah. Who else was I going to give it to?"

"I don't know?! A charity? A family member -"

"You are my family."

Blaine sighed and let his heavy head fall against Kurt's waiting shoulder. "You said that before…"

"And I meant it." Kurt reached up to tangle his fingers into Blaine's hair, which was now sweaty as if all his sweat glands went into overdrive the instant he felt he could respond to the threat of the men that had just been there. "But I was going to have my apartment sold and that will take care of me for awhile…"

"What'll you do now though?"

"I was hoping you still."

"Har har." Blaine said stiffly and leaned his head into Kurt's tension relieving fingers. "Besides that."

"I really don't know. I didn't plan for that."

"But you planned for me to be taken care of - much more than I'll ever need to be I'm sure, and you planned that blackmail -"

"I never planned that."

Blaine's head snapped up, out of Kurt's fingers and his brow furrowed, "But -"

"I do have a file on that computer detailing information about all my clients - but that file was to ensure I have enough information on them to make the best investments for their interests. There's nothing linking it to any lawyer or -"

"You LIED to them?!"

Kurt just nodded, as if he had been gambling on pennies instead of their lives. "Yeah."

To that, Blaine groaned and let his face fall back in against Kurt's shoulder. "Fuck…."

"Your language is usually much cleaner when you're sober."

"I'm lucky I'm alive to speak anything at all. Damn it Kurt… we could've died."

Kurt's fingers fell back onto Blaine's head, rubbing his neck tenderly as it transitioned away from his temples. "I know… that's why I made it up."

"You know I'll take care of you now… anything you need… it's your money in my account anyhow…" Blaine murmured into Kurt's suit jacket. The massage was helping ease the stress out of his body, and before long he found himself melting in against Kurt.

Kurt turned his head to press a kiss into the sweaty hair that was curling outwards in defiance to the gel in it. "Would be a nice change…"

"You can take care of our cats while I'm in class -"

"- Do I have to?"

Blaine laughed, bringing his hands up as the strength returned to them and setting them on Kurt's hips. "Well if I'm the one bringing home the bacon I expect you to be the one taking care of the home."

He felt another kiss to his temple, and Blaine felt the adrenaline rise within him again. It hadn't left his body, hadn't dissipated at all, just changed into a new form. Before Kurt could respond to his jibe, Blaine had lifted his head up and planted his lips on Kurt's silencing the words about to come out with a hard, needy kiss.

Whatever Kurt had been about to say turned into a moan inside Blaine's mouth. Hands began to roam. Blaine had the fingers of one hand slipping in between the buttons of Kurt's shirt to get a feel for his skin while Kurt had slipped a hand down the front of Blaine's pants, confirming that the intensity of the moment had shifted from one extreme to another. With his other hand, Kurt reached back, swiping everything he could off the desk and letting it clatter noisily onto the floor below with no regard for its existence. Those things were just that - things. The priority for them both was the living man in their arms.

It was Kurt who took charge, rolling their bodies around so Blaine was pressed back against the side of the desk and then damn near ripping off Blaine's jacket and dress shirt with the force of his hands working against it in unison. Understanding the need for action well, Blaine used his own hands to help Kurt's, stripping down in record time and sitting himself up on the desk - so cold under his skin.

Getting Kurt undressed took more time, but given that Kurt removed his clothing after kneeling down and taking Blaine's cock in his mouth, it was forgivable. Each hard suck made Blaine whine, and he curled his fingers around the edge of the desk to stop himself from following Kurt's mouth each time he moved his lips up. There came a point when Blaine didn't even realize Kurt was naked, at least not until that warm, wet mouth was taken away and Kurt stood back up, pushing Blaine back on the desk with one hand while the other snaked its way between the globes of Blaine's ass, and, oh, how Blaine had longed to be touched there again without knowing it. It had been months since Kurt had been there, and nothing felt so right as when Kurt sucked on one of his own fingers and then slid it up inside of Blaine, causing whimpers and needy, pleading gasps to come out of Blaine's mouth without permission.

There was an urgency, an eagerness, that had grown out of this moment. Before, all their lovemaking was just that - sweet, caring, and slow. This was not that. Blaine wanted Kurt inside him before he was ready and the rougher way Kurt was handling him against the desk, keeping him held down with one hand while the other worked him open with nothing more than spit and ferocity, was nothing short of insanely frantic.

But it was also hot. Blaine burned with each twist of Kurt's fingers, each stretch, and yet he wanted more. He wanted the pain because with it came even more pleasure.

"Let me… let me… bend over…." He panted, adding on a "Please." for good measure.

Kurt just groaned, and his hand moved off Blaine which allowed Blaine to roll over, bending down onto his elbows over the desk and present himself to Kurt. If Blaine had a thing - this had to be it.

What was more was that he only just realized this could be a thing for him.

Kurt's head dove between his cheeks, lapping over the hole that Blaine just wanted filled up with cock, and ensured it was slick with spit, as well as even more eager to be used with the tease. Then, without all the preamble, the "are you ready?"'s and the assurances that he was indeed ready that Blaine was used to, Kurt lifted his head back up and pressed his cock in between Blaine's cheeks, against his pucker, and in past the hard ring of muscle until Blaine could feel Kurt's hips resting against his ass and knew that Kurt was completely inside of him, making him burn and babble nonsense and grasp the desk with white knuckles.

God it felt good.

Somewhere in his incoherency, Blaine begged for more and Kurt complied, pulling back and shoving himself in again, stretching Blaine open and apart like Blaine was sure nothing else could. It was agony, and ecstasy, and again he pleaded for "More!" and "Harder!"

That was it. If Kurt had been holding back - he wasn't anymore, and Blaine got what he asked for. His body slid back and forth as Kurt slammed into him again and again to the point where Blaine was sure the only words he recognized coming out of him were "Fuck!" and "Yes!" and "More!", sometimes together, sometimes interchanged in order, and increasingly louder in order to speak over the slapping of flesh on flesh that echoed through the room.

Blaine's orgasm hit him like a freight train - blinding white in his eyelids and an absence of any thoughts or feelings in his head. His fingers and toes buzzed and tingled as if bees has got in under his skin, and he heard himself cry out though he didn't remember opening his mouth.

Kurt must have come very soon after, or at the same time, because as Blaine's body went lax on the desk (and thank goodness for how cool the marble of it was on his overheated skin), Kurt was panting and resting on top of Blaine in a similarly boneless state. They stayed like that, a mass of jellied humans trying to find their breath, until Kurt was able to roll of Blaine and awkwardly trudge to a closet he had in the office where he procured a small towel and brought it back to Blaine - who hadn't yet summoned the energy to move - and cleaned him off.

"I like this desk."

Kurt laughed at that, returning to the closet and grabbing two pairs of what appeared to be workout clothes. He dressed himself in one set and placed the other aside Blaine's happily used body. "It was expensive."

"Worth every penny."

Another laugh, and Kurt wheeled the chair back to them, setting it by Blaine who collapsed backwards into it and then managed to put the offered clothing on, albeit slowly.

"Maybe you could go back to school now…" Blaine suggested, peering up at Kurt who was leaning against the table and watching him. "... do something you love."

"I just did."

This time, Blaine rolled his eyes at Kurt, who then followed up his goofy answer with a serious one.

"I used to love singing…"

Blaine remembered the young man he had pulled through the halls of Dalton, the one whose eyes lit up when he sung his way… as beautiful then as he was now. He had been spying for his glee club, back before he was taken into the dark work he had just managed to escape from, and if that darkness hadn't consumed him, Blaine could well imagine that things might have gone quite different for the man he had. Maybe he would have gone to NYADA too, or another music or theater program. Maybe they would have met sooner. Maybe they wouldn't have met at all.

"So sing."

Blaine was expecting Kurt to agree, or, at the least, argue that it wasn't for him anymore in a cliched manner. He definitely wasn't expecting Kurt to be quiet for a moment, look up and out the window, and then open his mouth to produce the most crystalline voice that Blaine had ever heard before singing a Leonard Conen song with all the emotion and pain that it implied in a performance worthy of a standing ovation at a NYADA winter recital. It stunned Blaine to say the very least, having neither expected Kurt to sing for him or to be so damned good, and so he sat, listening to Kurt with a mouth hung half open.

"Oh my god Kurt… you're… really good." Blaine stammered once the singing ceased.

"Thank you."

"You should apply to NYADA."

"Maybe I will."

"Hell, you could probably go straight to Broadway."

The corners of Kurt's mouth tugged up in a small, sad smile, and as he looked down to where Blaine was sitting, the smile, so weak to begin with, fell. "I really wanted that when I was younger… but… I don't think I do anymore. I've changed… or, rather, things have changed me. I've spent the last few years acting for people until I thought it was who I was. I'm, honestly, kind of tired of being anything other than myself."

"Then… what…?" Blaine asked, inwardly questioning if it was alright for Kurt to not share that voice with the world.

"Well, I was thinking that I didn't have to decide this minute." The smile returned to Kurt's face, and Blaine mirrored it. "I will do something… I'm not good at being idle - never was. But, if it's okay, I'm kind of just wanting to find out who I am again, even if it means I have to watch those damned cats all day."

Blaine let himself laugh then, nodding to Kurt and reaching for his hands so he could pull him over and into his lap, hoping the chair could support them both.

"I think that's just fine."

* * *

_**Thanks for everyone who came on board with this little one-shot turned multi-chapter fic. I know some of you would like me to continue from here and include all the headcanon details I have about Kurt's decided career field, how many kids they have, how many kidney stones they pass between them, etc, etc. - but I felt that now that the threats have been resolved, they've figured out they love one another, and they have a future together, that it's a good time to conclude. Much love to you all! Thanks for all the reads and reviews!**_


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